As you all may recall quite well, Steve Jobs made an appearance on Friday, at the iPhone 4 press conference, in an attempt to alleviate the black cloud that has been raining on his iPhone 4 parade since launch day, the death grip and antennagate problem. Very politely, Jobs begins to shed light on the situation. As he does so, he also began to bring other manufacturers with over, specific phones into it as well. One of those phones was our very own BlackBerry Bold 9700. Here’s what Jobs said:

This was, in all ways, out of line. Signal dropping when you hold a phone a specific way has been a problem from the time manufacturers started moving away from those old, ugly external antennas. That is no mystery, and it never has been. Your hand can potentially block the antenna and you receive a lower signal. It makes sense. If you deliberately hold a phone in a way that you’re going to block the signal, you can make that issue seem worse than it is. The problem with the iPhone isn’t the signal dropping a bar or two. The issue is not even when you’re holding your phone in the so called “death grip.” The big issue is that when you create a bridge between two out of the three external antennas, your signal pulls a Houdini. I can attest to this as I have held many iPhone 4′s and while holding the phone in the same way I hold my BlackBerry or Nexus One, the signal would quickly degenerate and I would have to move my hand to a different position to use it. This definitely causes a lot of trouble when in general use of the phone, and if you’re a business user, can most certainly create a huge window for missed calls while you are completely oblivious to your signal being gone.

The striking thing is, RIM, a typically passive and quiet giant, decided to fire back this time. Here’s what RIM Co-CEO’s (Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie) had to say in response to Jobs’ claims:

“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.”

– Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie

Quite honestly, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Nor could most of our other fellow ‘Berry heads over at CrackBerry. Kevin of CrackBerry actually took it upon himself to ask his followers to try to replicate the issue and share their results via poll. It’s pretty obvious that Steve Jobs needs to tuck his tail and run to the high ground this time.

via: CrackBerry | BerryReview