Had a chance to read a lot of the transcripts.
I think everything here is being judged a bit out of context.
First, its clear that the prosecution, defense, judge and likely the jury really do not understand this technology very well. The average poster on Reddit probably understands it better. But thats where the context comes in. This was 1999. I submit that very, very few prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges would have understood cell tower nuances any better than the attorneys here in 1999.
Keeping this fact in mind, its a bit unfair to make the criticism that the prosecution didn't present strong enough evidence from the cell expert. I am sure we all would have liked the cell expert to just explain and answer every single question we all have.
However what he actually did testify on was strongly shaped by the nature of CG's objections. It was quite from the minute the State called the the cell expert what CG's strategy was. She attacked his expertise at every single turn, objected to just about everything at the start and clearly had the idea to discredit the expert based on him not using Adnan's Nokia 6160 when carrying out his testing.
Urick didn't focus on more specific answers we all because he didn't have to. That wasn't the angle of the objections from the judge and from CG were coming from. Urick and/or Murphy likely realized that based on the judge's wariness and CG's full blown attack on equipment differences that the key to convincing the jury was not about probabilities of the LP calls. That wasn't where CG attacked the expert's testimony. She attacked the make and model of Adnan's phone.
CG's ongoing and continual objections very likely directed where Urick went with the cell expert. She was attacking the make and model and everything Urick did was an attempt to get the expert to simply testify that no there are no practical differences in performance on the ATT network with Adnan's 6160 compared to the test phone.
Its easy to argue that Susan Simpson c.2015 could have made much better arguments. I agree completely she can now. At the same time I would say an experienced prosecutor in 2015 would be making better arguments than Urick was making in 1999 as well and a judge in 2015 would probably be far, far more familiar with cell expert testimony than the judge in 1999.