Hello!

I have an odd question hopefully someone can shed some light on.  I
live in the boonies and use Alltel.  Around the towns reception is
fine, but out in the sticks (a hunting cabin and in my truck) I've
used makeshift external antenna to improve the reception on my older LG
phone.  It has one of those little pull-out antennas that you can
easily unscrew from the phone, which allows me to screw in a makeshift
adapter connected to my external antennas.  For the cabin I simply
insert the stripped end of coax so it is touching the threads of the
antenna input on the phone.  'Obviously not mobile, but at least you
can get reception inside the building when necessary.

The problem: I need to upgrade phones, and few if any seem to have
easily-removable antennas.  In fact the phones I like most (e.g.
Samsung SCH-U520) has only an internal antenna.

I guess my question is what my options might be at this point.  I
suspect that simply having the stripped end of coax near that internal
antenna area of the phone would improve reception, but perhaps not (I
note that the phone has a warning on it for users not to touch it while
using the phone).  Perhaps there are other decent Alltel models out
there with removable antennas I haven't seen.  I guess keeping the
old phone and simply adding a phone/line is a possibility, but since I
would only be using the old phone infrequently this doesn't seem
ideal.

Any thoughts appreciated...thanks!
Coyotefred