The JLX12864G-086 is in my opinion a good replacement for the Nokia 5110.

Similar price 5$, better connection but slightly higher power consumption ( like 10 mA ).

The one I work with has a feature of sometimes forgetting "screen orientation", my workaround is repeating this command before writing any text. My guess it's a light sensitive part at the bottom of the display that triggers the effect. Once I've covered it with tape..problem seems to be gone.

spi_write_byte(0xa6, 0 ); /*  General: Positive Display */

/*  bottom 0XC8: reverse scanning order: from bottom to top*/
spi_write_byte(0xc8, 0 );

/* 0xA0: General: column address from left to right */
spi_write_byte(0xa0, 0 );

http://www.electrodragon.com/product/12864min-graphic-lcd/

http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/252515/JLX12864G-086.pdf

The alternative is trying to get a good connector for Nokia

http://www.starlino.com/nokia_lcd_connect.html