My statement was intended to be precise: You can’t triangulate / trilaterate if you only have one tower to communicate with.
I agree totally that mobile telephony is fundamentally bad for privacy because one tower by itself provides coarse tracking of your position.
Using signal levels could in theory narrow down the possible distance from the tower.
Assuming that the tower has a set of 3 directional antennae, dividing the 360⁰ at the tower into three 120⁰ sectors, this further narrows down your position.
Both of the previous two paragraphs are under ideal conditions. Real world conditions work to reduce the effectiveness, which maybe is a good thing. 
However maybe we should get back to the content of explicit transmissions to the tower that are not under your control and which may leak away your privacy.