Some early adopters of Apple’s new iPhone 4 have been complaining that they lose reception entirely if they hold the phone a certain way. Yes, you read that right. The way you hold the phone could severely impact the strength of the signal you can get.

It’s an especially big problem for left handed users, as the “problem area” is the lower left corner of the phone. Apple actually had the balls to respond to this issue “officially”.

Gripping any mobile 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.

I honestly thought that this was a joke at first. It’s not. In fact, this is what Steve Jobs had to say to one iPhone 4 owner who took the time to email him directly.

Just avoid holding it in that way.

Really, Steve? That’s your solution?

I’ve been trying not to rip so hard on Apple, lately, but this kind of shit drives me up the wall. This is an obvious design flaw and Apple simply says, “Meh, it’s no big deal.” Except it is a big deal since, you know, reception is kind of an important part of using a mobile phone.