BookingAir

Read Larry Magid's other articles on HuffingtonPost.com

"This has been blown so out of proportion that it is incredible" Steve Jobs said at a press conference at Apple headquarters where he announced that Apple will be giving away free cases to all iPhone 4 users.

Jobs admitted that the iPhone 4 drops slightly more calls than the 3G. Although he didn't say how many calls either phone drops, he did say that the difference is less than one additional call in every hundred calls.

(Disclosure: I'm on Cape Cod and not Silicon Valley where I'm based so I "covered" the event via Twitter and CNET and New York Times live blogs).

I think Jobs did the right thing and the press conference was pretty close to what I predicted. Jobs started off by talking about how incredibly well iPhone sales are doing (3 million units so far) and said that only 1.7% of the phones purchased had been returned compaired to 6% for the iPhone 3G (he didn't say the period of time for the 3G returns). He also said that only 0.55% of iPhone users called to complain about the antenna problems which prompted someone to Tweet "because no one can get a signal to call."

Truth be told, iPhone users can get a signal just as well as with any other phone as long they don't put their finger on the little crack in the lower left side of the wrap-around metal antenna.

In addition to giving people free cases or bumpers, Jobs promised to give people a full refund on their phone if they're not happy. He said he believed that AT&T would let them out of their contract.

I was pretty pleased with Apple's response accept for one thing. Jobs spent a fair amount of time claiming that other phones have similar problems. According to the New York Times live blog he showed a "Blackberry Bold, Droid Eris and other phones dropping bars when gripped."

Defensive Comments about Other Smartphones

First, I'm not sure how true that is. I've used a Blackberry Bold and never noticed that problem and although I haven't tried the Droid Eris, I've used many Android phones including the Droid and Droid X and have never encountered a "grip of death." I have, of course, encountered plenty of dropped calls on every cell phone I've ever used which does help put this general issue into some perspective.

Read More: Apple, Iphone 4, Steve Jobs

Follow HuffingtonPost on Twitter