At Apple?s press conference 16th July, Steve Jobs took the stage to provide information on the user reports of iPhone 4 signal drops and other general iPhone news.

Steve Jobs explained why these dropped calls occur, and making sure to mention that this problem is only of a very small minority, less than 1% .He also explained that the Death Grip is not unique to the iPhone 4, and that it exists with all smart phones, giving demonstrations on the BlackBerry Bold 9700 , HTC Droid Eris, and Samsung Omnia II.

His simple fix to this is providing a free bumper case to all iphone 4 purchasers through September 30th, and furthering the offer if this problem persists after that.Apple’s official bumpers cannot be quickly produced to meet demand so a choice of third party cases will be provided.Of course any unsatisfied customers can return an undamaged iPhone 4 for a full refund.

After this issue was addressed in the press conference, Jobs ended with some more general news about the iPhone 4.Since it?s launch 3 weeks ago, iPhone 4 has sold over 3 million units and is the highest rated smart phone on the market.

At the end of this month the white iPhone 4 will be shipping in limited qualities and become more available in time, also the iPhone 4 will be launching in 17 of the 18 countries announced ( excluding South Korea for government issues).

And in closing, IOS 4.0.1 was released, fixing apple?s algorithm to determine the signal bars to be displayed.Previously, iPhone 4 may have displayed 4-5 bars when in reality a signal may only have a strength of 2-3 bars.

The full press conference can be watched here.