The wife and I each have a mobile phone. Both have sim cards supplied by SFR. One of the phones is just a phone that makes calls and does text messages. The other is a Samsung smartphone that does lots of things that we haven’t a clue how to use. When we place the phones side by side in our village home, the Samsung has 5 bars of signal and the other one occasionally just has one bar, and more often than not simply says “No Service”.
How can this be so ? Two phones. Same network. One that we can use and the other that we can’t. Go to the middle of a big town and they both work just fine.
Can anyone explain this to me in layman’s language please.
Does the symbol at the top of the screen indicate 4G on the Samsung but only 3G on the other?
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old phone - crap (out of date service)
new phone - a lot better reception etc…
Simple enough? 
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Ouch! 
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Anglozone is probably on the money, also don’t forget there is no standardisation of number of bars for a given signal strength between different phones.
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That said @anon88169868 you can tweak a phone to give a better chance of getting a stronger signal.
It depends on what phone it is as to whether the options exist or have user accessibility.
For example, the service provider can if asked nicely access the device remotely to activate options but the likelihood of that with an old Motorola “brick” are more remote than hens teeth 
OH upgraded his iphone and now can’t get even 3g here, but with his older phone he had 4g, so I don’t think it’s the age of the phone
No, a lot goes into the mix but in general more modern phones have better electronics.
Here’s a simple explanation…
http://www.antenna-theory.com/design/cellantenna.php
So, it seems the bigger the phone the more scope there is for a better aeriel. Try rotating them 90 degrees.
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Perhaps I should have made plain that it is the newer phone (by 12 months or so) that has no signal here.
Just goes to prove… us oldies are the best 
Phones use 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE etc in different bands (frequency) not all phones have each band available so some can use the best band as selected automatically or manually. Others with less bands or missing ones struggle to find connection. Almost no service at all, maybe a weak 2G at our home but whoosh they have put up a 4G mast and I connected immediately to the 4G service, O/H on the other hand struggled to find anything as her phone hasn’t the required band (frequency) in the phone. So now need to buy one that does.
The Samsung (the 3yr old phone) has a 3 G symbol, but the newer one has no symbol about any sort of G at all.
This all came to light as a result of reading the most recent edition of our commune gazette in which the Mayor was extolling the benefits of the new 4G system.
Historically, neither of our mobiles have ever worked in our house, but we were being asked to try them again now that there is 4G and so we did. So now we have a 3yr old 3G phone that works better because there is a 4G signal (the logic of which is beyond me), and a 2yr old phone (of unknown G) that still doesn’t work.
I have to admit that it’s mostly ‘double dutch’ to me so I think I’ll just turn it off and throw it back in the glovebox in the hope that it might possibly work if I happen to breakdown somewhere.
It’s backward compatibility @Robert_Hodge
If it can’t manage 4G it will step down to what it can get - in your case 3G.
You might like to look at this explanation of the difference between 3rd (3G) and 4th (4G) generation technologies.