Bluetooth extended range

After using hc-05 to connect to my android, does the job - but I would like longer range. So I bought hm-10 "ble 4.0", because I thought it had a longer range. Not sure if it actually does since it's taken me a very long time to figure out the android part of connecting to it. So far, when I was able to connect ble to the hm-10 the range seemed to be about the same as hc-05.

Has anyone used any other modules to get an extended range with bluetooth? The application I'm building is for car/automotive, and connects to Android (via bluetooth). Blindly buying modules and testing them gets expensive in budget and especially my time and effort. So I figured I'd ask if anyone actually has experience with specific hardware known to work, please.

If the range is about the same, it may be because Android is only BT2 and therefore HM-10 reverts to BT2, including the decreased range. You can get a BLE checking app.

I would like to hear of your experience with connecting HM-10 to Android

For the Android app, i compiled a modified Ble Gatt example. It scans for decivices, connectd, list services, and echo data back to hm 10.