I don’t own an iPhone 4, but I’ve heard the news, and now Apple has a response:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02appleletter.html

“…gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones.”
Really? I tried gripping my phone right now and couldn’t reproduce this problem. I grabbed my friend’s iPhone and gripped it…I gripped it real hard and still could not reproduce the problem. This is starting to sound like my emails to support customers at work…”please tell me how to reproduce the problem.” 2 out of 2 failed attempts for me does not add up to Apple’s “almost any mobile phone” defense claim.

“…we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.”
Apple is claiming they made a mistake of throwing in 2 bars..so when you see 5 bars, it’s actually 3. Umm…how does this make one feel better when they see zero bars?! Does zero bars equal negative 2 bars? Does 2 bars equal zero bars? Where is the logic in this?

Ok, forget the faulty claims and illogical arguments. The tone of the letter is not sympathetic at all, but attempts to make you feel small for suggesting that Apple’s “most successful product” in history has a hardware defect. I am god of the coolest mobile device ever, don’t you dare question me! But seriously, I would think that this letter would’ve been more tactful coming from Apple. Personally, I want Apple to succeed; perhaps I’m interpreting the letter in the wrong way. Please tell me that I’m wrong; I’d admit it if I really were.

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