Jobs: Nobody’s Perfect (But We’re Very Close)

One of Steve Jobs’s major points in addressing the iPhone 4 flap today was the universality of the problem. Any phone on any platform might show signal attenuation when held in a particular way, he said. So yes, there’s a problem–smartphones have weak spots.

But in contrast to the media fuss, he said, it’s not a problem for the vast majority of iPhone 4 owners, and he rolled out some numbers to back it up. AppleCare stats show only 0.55 percent of owners have called about reception or antenna issues. The return rate on the iPhone 4 is 1.7 percent, less than a third of the rate for the iPhone 3GS. Jobs did acknowledge that the new model dropped more calls than its predecessor–by less than one call per hundred.

Other numbers from the news conference:

• Apple has put $100 million into its phone testing facilities and has 18 Ph.D.’s working on antenna design.
• More than 3 million iPhone 4s have been sold in the phone’s first three weeks.