The upshot is that I spoke to the manager at the Cingular store here in
Allentown PA.  He told me that all the phones are manufactured to the same
FCC standards so that in theory, one is no better than another in signal
strength.  Then he told me that is BS.  He said first, with any given model,
if you manufacture one million phones, don't you think that 20000 are going
to be different in some way than the rest?  I agree with that.  Then he said
that different manufactures probably tweak their phones but are still within
the FCC specs.  Then he talked me into taking a Razr V3 for a try.  Well, I
drove around with it to the spots where my wife and I were having the most
trouble.  Low and behold, the phone worked perfectly.  We went back and got
another one and it is perfect also.  Even works in the basement of my house
(3 bars, all other phones were 0 to 1 bar).

The bottom line is that there is a difference between handsets even though
there probably shouldn't be.  And I would bet that different handsets work
differently in different areas depending on the exact "cellular tower and
signal logistics".

Thanks to all who responded to my original post!

Jim