Can a weak cell signal prevent connecting to nRFCloud.com

[SteveHx]

It's looking more and more like a lot of my problems relate to a weak cell signal. Is the RF front end on the devkit known to be inferior to a normal cellphone? My personal cellphone gets 1-2 bars when on my desk, and 2-3, sometimes 4 bars when held up next to where I have the units about 4' above the desk. I will do some digging into commands to check this theory, but is there any easy way to augment the RF front end? In the end applications, these will need to work in areas with less than ideal cellphone coverage.

[SteveHx]

Also, the instructions keep referring to an "LTE Link Monitor". Jumping to the link given in the instructions, it appears to be an obsolete applet for nRF Connect for Desktop. I presume it's been superceded by Cellular Monitor, which however lacks the "Auto device/port filter option" referenced in the instructions.

[Charlie]

Which instruction are you referring to? Could it also be one older version of the document?

[SteveHx]

The above sequence worked with one specific nRF9161DK. On the Thingy:91, AT#XNRFCLOUD=1 sometimes says OK, a few seconds later says #XNRFCLOUD: 0,0. AT#XNRFCLOUD=2 always says ERROR, with no clue as to what the error might be.

[SteveHx]

Back to my original question: the title of this ticket, which no one thus far has bothered to answer. Could the root of all my struggles be as simple as a wimpy RF section on the nRF9161, 10 dB or so inferior to a standard cellphone?

[SteveHx]

The other ongoing question that has not been touched, is how to connect in to Thingy:91 to the logic-level UART signal into the nRF9161 that accepts the AT commands.