In the above example, the common solution for cars, airplanes and other objects like signal towers would be to add a headlight to signal the presence of the object.

On 3G it can only show you the antenna the phone is actually connected to along with its signal strength, but on 2G it will show you all nearby towers complete with signal strength.

Another way to try to nail down just what sort of signal you should expect is to look into how far away your local towers are.