The Cell Phone Junkie

MacRumors forum user samcraig emailed Steve Jobs about the low signal issue while holding the new iPhone 4 in a specific way.  Here is the email:
Question – What’s going to be done about the signal dropping issue. Is it software or hardware?

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. 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.

Update: This has been confirmed as an official statement from Apple.

Andrew Seybold, a wireless consultant, said externalizing the antenna can make it bigger and less encumbered, thereby boosting cellular performance. But it also makes it more vulnerable to human interference, he said, something Apple should have known.

“It appears by using the outside band for most of the antenna, they freed up a lot of space inside to make it thinner and give it a better battery,” said Seybold. “I applaud what they tried to do but I’m not sure they went over the nuances of this choice.”

A rumor this weekend suggests that Apple will be releasing an iOS update next week, perhaps as early as Monday, which will take care of this antenna signal attenuation issue. The 4.01 update was referenced in a series of forum posts on Apple’s tech support forums that have since been removed, but not before readers grabbed the pertinent information.  The success of this fix hinges upon the fact that the antenna issue is software-based and easily corrected with a quickly deployed update.