Put it this way: if there was some magic trick to make the phone radio more sensitive, that worked across all models of phone, is it plausible that it was figured out by some app developer but not the professional rf engineers, or that once it was known the manufacturers wouldn't have incorporated it into the firmware?
AFAIK those that do anything at all just force the phone to rescan more often. That may sometimes cause it to switch to a nearer basestation a little earlier than it would otherwise have done, which would result in a higher signal level being reported temporarily. Of course this would also reduce battery life, and does nothing really useful because if the phone actually needs to change stations it will.