Responding to the criticism, Apple’s Press Contact, Natalie Harrison, wrote in a letter to all iPhone users, the possible reason for the low reception issues in iPhone 4.
After a glorified start of letter with claims of The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history, Natalie began a gruesome explanation of how every handset faces a problem of depreciation in signal strength when gripped in hands without considering the fact that iPhone 4 is the first ever device that has reported such a problem.

Apple’s PR officer said

To start with, 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. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

Later on in the letter, Natalie, acknowledged the possible reduction in the number of reception bars in when gripped, which usually is less when in the area of strong signal strength. But when the user moves to certain locations where signal strength is low, the number of bars reduced is far in greater number than it should.

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.

Sighting the formula of calculation of number of bars being the possible reason for the drop in number of bars and also quoting that the number of bars observed were non-existent in the first place, the Press Contact pointed towards the fact that the hardware was not to be blamed, rather the iOS running had an inherent flaw in programming.

The possible solution that is going to come up soon would be a software update from Apple that will contain a better algorithm for the bars provided by AT&T.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

The whole response seems to be like a cover up-act from Apple. If it would have been simply because of a few bars less or more in the display and not because of some real hardware deal, then there wouldn’t have been such hue and cry. But then since we are not some technical-experts on antenna its better we give credit to Apple and give them the chance to come up with solutions.

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