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New iPhone 4! Now with reduced cell reception!

By Alexis Santos on Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 8:02 pm

“Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas,” Jobs told an iPhone 4 user in an email. “This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.”

While the solutions Jobs offers are perfectly viable, they’re not something the purchaser of a phone whose baseline price is $199.99 likely wants to hear.

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The honeymoon ended early for many owners of the new iPhone 4 after making their first few calls. Apple fans brought home the new phone only to find out that cellular signal reception was worse than that of the previous models.

Although the iPhone 4’s design isn’t purely aesthetic, as the metal band which holds the device together is actually the cellular and WiFi antenna, there was something that Apple did not account for — hands. Around for thousands of years, human hands have been fueling revolutions and now foiling the latest iPhone’s cell reception. The solution? Buy a case or hold it differently, says Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs.