iPhone 3G signal issues??

[hotpace1]

I'm brand new here so don't shoot me if this has been mentioned a million times before. I live in the north of England and have owned my iPhone 3G for 8 months now [since it came out in fact] and my wife also has one. Thing is, as much as I love it I can't help but think that its signal is a pile of crap compared with every other normal phone I've ever had. Now the signal where I live is a bit dodgy to say the least as I don't live in a city, I live in a small town on the coast but I have to say, that with the exception of London, I don't get a great signal hardly anywhere else. I've been to Leeds, Edinburgh, the Lake District, Hull etc etc and the 3G drops [usually as soon as I start using the device] and when travelling through countryside in my car the normal, simple phone signal is often not there at all [again, usually if you pick the phone up to start texting or emailing etc]. Its very annoying because as much as I know some of it may be down to network coverage, my old Sony Erikson simply didn't have that much downtime anywhere. For example I could always make a call from inside my workplace with my old Sony [which was also on O2 so they obviously DO have a signal there] and now I have to position my iPhone in a particular place and just leave it in order to get a bare minimum signal so that I can receive texts. If I pick up the phone it immediately loses all signal and I have to go outside and wait 2 minutes or so for it to pick up anything outside! Also, even in inner cities if I go into a shop and pull my phone out it tends to lose 3G as well. Should 3G reach inside buildings when in city centres that are 3G enabled? I'm confused as to why its so bad? And on both our iPhones as well so you can't even say one might be broke. Is this just the way it is and everyone just gets on with it?