I have a family member that uses an old-school Nokia 5160 TDMA/analog with
an external (car type) antenna which allows them to use the phone at home.
No signal in the house without the antenna.

Kind of guessing at some point they'll need to migrate to GSM, and it's good
to have a plan for how to do this. Someone in this group volunteered that
the Nokia 6310 still has the standard Nokia external antenna connector (but
this one is 1900Mhz only).

Looks like the Motorola T721 can do both 800Mhz and connect to an external
antenna. In addition, the Nokia 6340i GAIT phone appears to do both 800Mhz
GSM and have the external antenna-- if I'm not mistaken.

The odd part is that none of these phones are listed on phonescoop as having
external antenna options.  Ideally, we'd like to stick to a Nokia with
850Mhz GSM and external antenna capability.  Partly because we could
probably use the same antenna, but more importantly the external antenna
connector on the old Nokias is really the right thing.  If you've used this,
you'll know what I mean.   i.e. the odd-ball metal-cup style connector on
many phones disconnects when you walk around and hold the phone.  The Nokias
have an easy to use, and great fitting external antenna connector that
really works well.

Anyway, any additional thoughts welcome.

-Dan

PS and FYI: I have CDMA/analog phones with external antenna connectors that
fully suck.  The Nokia 3285 is the only Nokia for Verizon that I've used
that works well and has the connector I like. i.e. I broke one Kyocera 6035
because the antenna connector is soldered on the mainboard of the phone, and
one too many toques disconnects it and you :)