Here in my town I have the "Personal" antenna, which is horrible too. Outside the house I can get enough signal to lock on a 3G connection. Inside the house in 98% of the rooms the signal goes down to 2G and only one or two signal bars. Ant that is if I left the phone in the table, if I pick it up to make a call or do something it disconnects or gets too low signal to even lock in a data connection or make a good call.

The solution for me is using it just right to the back yard's door, there I can get good signal and sometimes 3G if I left it in the table. Useful to use the hotspot when having a blackout and the modem isn't giving WiFi to the notebook. In the rest of the house I use WiFi and hold it without touching the bottom antenna, if I do so the signal goes out and I can't receive calls.

It's funny because I'm paying the most expensive service called "Black" because my phone is branded and I have a contract, and I can't even use the 3G or make a good call in my own house!!

Beside that, the N9's antenna is REALLY good, otherwise with another phone I wouldn't get any signal at all. Some of my friends who also have Personal won't get any signal when they come visiting

I don't know what kind of phones your friends have but seriously, N9's reception is by far the worst I've had on a mobile phone.
I didn't realize that for the fist two months of usage but once I was in a hospital's basement and I couldn't find any network provider while my mom's 7100 supernova would ring when was in my moms bag. It's not that big issue though.
Poor wifi reception: I can live with also but I cannot stand that my beloved N9 losses signal while being in my pocket while I'm driving in the middle of a big city. It's just too much.
Recently I came home late. My girl says: "Oh, the one unreachable by phone has finally come home." I pick my phone, oh, I have a message(damn quiet the n9 is and has the 'new' soft vibrator) which said: "This person tried to call you". Great job, Nokia.

N9 is really a great device, or actually Harmattan is a masterpiece, N9 just carries it. But it does annoy me and from time to time I take a vacation from it and use my old 6650fold.

Yeah maybe i'm wrong and is just an illusion. I thought the plastic body helps a lot when it comes to signal. For me the overall signal is bad too, even in the city center where there are the best antennas. My old 5230 never loose a signal bar, while the N9 keeps going down and up and even disconnecting sometimes as you said...

no complaints with reception here, although the vibrate is pretty weak. isn't there a tweak for that?

It's kind a vibrator. Take old 5800 or Hamberts 5230, you could not only feel the phone vibrating in another room but you could also hear it.
I've read somewhere long ago about those new vibrators, take occupy way less space inside a phone and probably uses less energy, too.
I think they were first implemented in iphones and now every phone has one.

The old vibrators in phones were built the same way as PS2 game controller vibrators, there is a small DC motor inside with a small eccentric weight on the axle, when it rotates the whole device will vibrate quite strongly.

New design is quite different, at least the controller is a DAC that generates a modulated sine wave that drives the mechanical unit. I am not sure whether the mechanical part is rotative or linear actuator but still, it drives a small mass based on the DAC output.
This method enables the vibrations to be programmed in amplitude and frequency.

It is possible to make the vibrations larger, but I do caution against doing that, it is possible to mechanically damage the actuator if you overload it. (just as some way people have broken the speakers on their devices by tweaking the output volume limits...)

I think it's a linear actuator. Try slapping n9 in the back. There is a sound of something loose, I think vibrator.

Thanks for the complete explanation, Juice! You solved one of my most important doubts about the new kinds of vibrators.

I also think it's a linear actuator, since it doesn't make noise anymore like old phones when you leave it on the table. Maybe the axle of the vibration is just horizontal!

Due to reception problems both in my house in Denmark ( 45km from Copenhagen) and in my summerhouse in the forest in Sweden (Halland) I bought a N9 in spring 2012.
The reason for this was a test from 3 company showing that: "N9 has the best antenna ever!" Link unfortunately in Danish languages:http://www.mobil.nu/nyheder/3-nokia-...-1.482186.html
Unfortunately for me it wasn't correct, the antenna in N9 wasn't better or only slightly better than the one in my old HTC Desire.

Further due to a test of 9 popular Smartphones (N9 not included) from a Danish university professor jan. 2013: The antenna's in Smartphones are going from bad to chocking poor.
Link unfortunately again in Danish languages:http://ing.dk/artikel/135279-her-er-...mobiltelefoner

Conclusion the antenna in N9 is neither better nor properly worse than the general quality of antenna's in modern Smartphones, which are however in general from bad to very bad!

The best antenna ever due to Nokia and also from my experience was the one in the mobilphone Nokia 61i - even in the forest in Sweden it works and even without antenna enhancer!