TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Brian Ford on iPhone 4′s reception problem:

Apple’s biggest and most immediate problem is going to be bad PR: For whatever reason, there are a lot of people who want to see Apple fail, and fail spectacularly. Consumers, for their part, don’t know anything about failure rates; a defective product is a defective product. Someone whose first experience with an iPhone is a splotchy yellow screen or an alarming reception issue won’t care (or won’t know) that the HTC EVO 4G and the Droid Incredible are suffering from embarrassing screen issues as well.

I’m seeing this issue as well. When I set my iPhone 4 down, it has full bars. After a few seconds of holding it in my left hand, it drops to between zero and two bars. While testing this at home yesterday, it didn’t seem to have an effect on my 3G connection speed. This morning, though, I tested it in a different area with less consistent service, and it did seem to cut off my connection altogether.

Brian is right—this is Apple’s most important iPhone release to date, because it is competing directly with quite successful Android competitors, and it has received a tremendous amount of interest. Apple needs to address it immediately.