Apple to offer Free "Bumper cases" to iPhone 4 owners

An iPhone 4 Bumper Case in Green

In response to the uproar over spotty reception for new iPhone 4, Apple CEO Steve Jobs spoke Friday to defend the company’s handling of the matter.

One takeaway: Buyers of the iPhone 4 will be getting free cases to help prevent users’ grip on the phone from weakening the signals carrying conversations. Jobs said Apple cannot make enough of the bumpers that some people have been buying, so it is working with third parties to get the cases for users.

If you’re still not happy, Jobs said, “you can bring your iPhone back within 30 days for a full refund.”

Apple was holding an invite-only press conference to talk about its fast-selling iPhone, which has also been the most controversial, given what many believe to be an engineering flaw that leaves its users with dropped calls.

“We’re not perfect, phones aren’t perfect. But we want to make all our users happy,” Jobs said.

Jobs said Apple can’t make enough bumpers for of all 3 million iPhone 4 customers, so it’s contracting with third-party manufacturers and will offer customers a choice of cases.

Apple plans to continue offering these free cases until September 30, at which point Apple will re-evaluate whether or not that’s still the best solution. Jobs admitted that Apple’s internal iPhone 4 testing showed the phone dropped more calls than the iPhone 3GS, but said the number of additional dropped calls was extremely small and that competitive smartphones such as the BlackBerry and the Droid suffer from similar problems.

Apple has a website dedicated to this issue at http://www.apple.com/antenna/.