Before iPhone 4 was officially launched we started hearing about reports that users who received their iPhone 4’s were experiencing reception issues when the phone was held in a particular position covering the lower part of the stainless steel band. When a user emailed Steve Jobs about this issue he replied saying “Just avoid holding it in that way.” and Apple also released a press release where they accepted this issue and generalized it by saying:

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,

Recently another iPhone 4 customer wrote an email to Apple CEO pointing out the signal issues and this time Jobs reportedly said “There is no reception issue. Stay tuned.”

This sparked a new rumor which suggests that when Jobs said “Stay tuned” he might be referring to software update (iOS 4.01) which could possibly fix iPhone 4 issues.

AppleInsider recently reported that a post in Apple tech forums confirmed that iOS 4.01 was in the works and could arrive as early as today:

The fix is expected to address a issue in iOS 4 related to radio frequency calibration of the baseband. Readers who saw the original forum discussions say that the issue is believed to occur when switching frequencies; because the lag is allegedly not calibrated correctly, it results in the device reporting “no service” rather than switching to the frequency with the best signal to noise ratio.

iOS 4 introduced some enhancements to how the baseband selects which frequencies to use, so it makes sense that the error may have crept into those changes. Additionally, this explains why iOS 4 has also caused similar problems for iPhone 3GS users.

Even though the existing reception issue doesn’t seem to slow down iPhone 4 sales however, it would be interesting to see if a software update could solve this problem.

Are you experiencing iPhone 4 reception issues? Did you buy a bumper to prevent call dropping? Let us know in the comments section below.