iPhone 4 cell reception suffers when picked up?

WTF? If the antennae issue was an AT&T problem all of these blogs would be scathing against them, demanding AT&T fix, replace or do whatever it takes to make it right. These blogs are so Apple biased it makes me sick.

Get this: Apple is wrong. They fucked up. This is an obvious snafu making them look really bad but what really is going to hurt them (stock price, reputation and loss of loyal Apple fans) is their arrogance. Do they tick we are stupid? The way we hold the phone? That is 100% bullshit. Apple should send every customer a bumper immediately and then recall the fucking lemon iphone 4. They would keep and even gain respect from the market but the arrogance they have about this issue insisting it is the user’s fault and no giving us bumpers or recalling will hurt them. I sold my stock today. I went back to my 3gs and put the iphone 4 on ebay. I am done with them because of the way they handled this. AT&T may have had issues but look at the billions they sunk into their network AFTER ACKNOWLEDGING THE PROBLEMS. AT&T did not say the users should not make a phone call from that street corner or they should not pull mail in that city. This is the exact same thing except almighty Apple thinks we are a bunch of idiots.

Wake up Steve. You fucked up and you are fucking up more by not taking care of your customers you dick.

I've tried hard to reproduce this problem with my iPhone 4, and I can't get it to happen. I can hold the thing tightly with both hands, making sure to press hard on each of the three seams for maximum skin contact. Five bars, every time, all the time! Is this a humidity thing? I'm in Arizona, we don't have humidity here. Is this a drinking thing? I haven't tried rinsing my hands in tequila yet.

I haven't noticed this supposed reception issue, the last time I noticed anything similar was back in the day when i had a television with rabbit ears. I guess i'm one of the lucky ones, or perhaps this is a myth as I suspect, since no reviewer, including engadget seems to have noticed this issue

I tried this on my iPhone 4, both holding the phone with my left hand and my right hand as I would be holding it when making a phone call and I did not see any drop in signal strength. I did see a drop in signal strength when I cupped the phone in a way that causes my hand to make contact with the seems in the metal band that wraps the iPhone 4. I don't think this is an issue. Try running the test in a way that reflects how you would be making an actual phone call.

I have three UHF receivers, two with short stubby antenna which are great at picking up reception -- the third one has a retractable antenna and has to be the proper length to receive a signal, but as soon as I touch it to adjust, I lose the signal altogether. Anyone else in the house touches, no loss of signal.

I cannot wear a watch with a quartz movement, somehow my body screws up the electronics, so I don't wear a watch.

When my 3GS is sitting on my desk about 3 feet from the router, I have full signal on WiFi, as soon as I pick it up, signal drops to two bars, same thing happens on the cell network. My Nokia N95 did it and so did the Nokia Communicator 9500.

I have come to the conclusion that electronic devices don't like a hand job.

This is pretty much how phones work .. You obstruct the antenna with your hand and the bars drop.. My iPhone 2G does this and I would be worried that the signal meter is broken if it didn't

This is NOT a surprise !

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=10300095&posted=1#post10300095

Please watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-BR-LgA9Lw - its an easy to solve problem - don’t short-circuit the separators of the metal case (especially not with sweaty fingers).
MK

The same issue with my 3GS here.
On 3G network the bars went down when I move it up from the table and the phone is switching to No Service. When I lay it back on the table all things go back to normal.

Guys if it is any consolation I have an iPhone 2g(1st Gen phone) running OS 3.0(didn't bother updating it to 3.1.3).

I decided to test if this is happening on my iPhone 2g so here it goes :
On the table => 5 full bars.
Held it for 30 seconds => between 1 and 2 bars.
Put it back on table => 5 full bars.

What gives?!

By the way I am living in Singapore(the other side of the world) not the US and even though it is jailbroken and unlocked I highly doubt this is related to it. On the other hand it goes to show that it has been happening in prior versions of iPhone and even on jailbroken and unlocked phones!