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(Sorry!)

For those of you sick of the "OMG iPhone 4!" storyline, moving on to an "OMG iPhone 4 reception breaks during left-handed callin... g!" storyline may be even more annoying. But it appears real.

The problem apparently occurs if you hold an iPhone 4 in your left hand, covering a spot on its lower left corner where the antenna surrounding the device has a gap. As my co-worker Mike Shear demonstrated on Thursday in the Post's newsroom, the phone's screen will show a loss of signal, falling from four bars to one or zero; returning the phone to the other hand should allow the signal to return to full strength.

(The phone loaned by Apple's public-relations department didn't exhibit this issue, but that may only speak to the lack of conductive material in my hands or of Apple PR's exacting standards.)

You can inspect evidence of this phenomenon at third-party sites collecting reports from skeptical wireless users, passing on observations from wireless engineers, and relating comments from Apple spokespeople. And there's at least one online petition imploring Apple to "listen to it's most loyal customers."

Update, 2:45 p.m.: An Apple publicist sent along a copy of the company's statement: "Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. 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, or simply use one of many available cases." Apple chief executive Steve Jobs apparently e-mailed a pithier version of that advice to one iPhone 4 user: "Just avoid holding it that way."

The tragedy here is that all of this would have been prevented if Apple engineer Gray Powell hadn't lost a prototype iPhone back in March. He's left-handed, you know... well, he was until March.

(Note for the sarcasm-impaired: I am neither implying that Powell is a southpaw nor that Apple severs hands from offending employees.)

Look... I don't mean to belittle concerns about this issue. But in the context of people who live with greater or lesser flaws in other gadgets that don't land on the front of news sites, it only seems fair to ask iPhone 4 owners freaking out over this particular item to a) deal with it and b) take a spot in line with everybody else coping with flawed electronics, some of whom paid much more for their gadgets. These things aren't perfect and never will be, otherwise there wouldn't be the chance for dramatic upgrades every year that spur perfectly sane people to wait, and wilt, in line in 95-degree heat outside stores.