The range of wireless connection depends on how "loud" you are shouting, how far are sender and receiver apart, what is in between and how sensitive are the ears on the other side. If you communicate both ways, the same is true for the way back. It called the link budget and uses a love/hate logarithmic unit called Decibel (dB).
From this you can see there are a couple of points of failure.
If your WiFi access point has good antennas, a sensitive receiver and a high power transmiter you will be able to talk to it and listen to it over longer distances, without changing anything on your side.
Your mobile phone needs to be cute and cool. It can't have antennas sticking out of it and it can't use as much power.
If you want to compare the chips capability. Google 8266 data sheet. Then look for TX Power and RX Sensitivity. It's usually on the first couple of pages because these are key differentiators for wireless chips.
TX Power, a larger positive number means more power can be sent. This does not mean you are allowed to send with this much power. This is different for each country and for each frequency band.
RX Sensitivity, a more negative value means more sensitivity.
Beware: 0 dBm means 1mW and not 0 mW.