To your point , I have some anecdotal experiences.
Traveling across US (rural & Urban) as well as here in SoCal I realized that my Motorola phones were doing much better than others (was comparing in real time same carrier) holding onto the conversation as well as getting the signal out in low strength areas - on average 4dB and more. The only ones that were not excelling as much were Z2 Play and Z2 force.
The brands I had compared with were flagships of LG & Samsung.
As of recently, we learned that even a cheap Moto G6 Play was superior to iPhone X. Same home, same carrier , one is getting calls through the other not. It’s not just 1 phone vs another, but there were other 2 iPhone Xs also failing, in this same place and spot as another Moto (X4) waa fine.
If apple can’t match the cellular radio connectivity of budget Motorola, there has to be more to it than just the money. I know that major disadvantage was not using Qualcomm which perfected it’s craft for US radios , but there were plenty of other Android OEMs who used same chips as Moto and still failed to match it in strength.
Given that L5 comes with modems it has, of course we can be worried how it all works out.