Would you sue over iPhone 4’s reception problems?

A California law firm called Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, LLP is looking for users who “recently purchased the new iPhone and have experienced poor reception quality, dropped calls and weak signals.” Having placed the inquiry on its website, the firm — which is known for suing Facebook and Zynga over “scammy gaming ads,” according to Gawker — may be gearing up to do some courtroom battle with Apple.

Given the number of people who are experiencing issues with their new Apple handsets, this could wind up being the mother of all class action lawsuits.

According to a Gizmodo source who is allegedly part of Apple’s engineering team, the antenna issue is a result of a communication or policy problem inside the company. Cupertino has an extreme focus on industrial design, one that can trump engineering or implementation concerns. According to KCR, this is a big bone of contention and a key facet of the situation:

Steve Jobs told the public that the new design for the iPhone 4’s [external] antenna would provide better reception than previous versions of the iPhone [at WWDC 2010]… There also appears to be evidence that this issue was known to Apple before the iPhone 4 was released, and was the subject of internal debate between engineers and industrial designers at the company… So consumers appear to be left with a phone that has a significant design flaw, which the company was aware of prior to launch and never disclosed to the 1.7 million people who purchased the phone…

So what are users left with? According to the law firm, a smug answer about how all cell phones have signal issues when held in a similar fashion, a different hand grip ought to be used, and that buying a $30 bumper case can help the issue. The firm feels this is unacceptable. Sure, users could just return their phones — but then there’s also that pesky 10% restocking fee.

KCR isn’t the only one hitting the courts. According to Yahoo News, there are at least three other suits pending over the iPhone 4. These accuse Apple and AT&T of “negligence in marketing, unfair business practices, and false and misleading advertising.”

And still, even with all the bad press the glitches are getting, iPhone 4 sales seem to be booming, with more than 1.7 million since June 24. Then again, I haven’t seen metrics yet on how many of those resulted in returns or exchanges. Now those would be interesting figures.

iPhone 4 users, are you suffering signal issues with your new handset? Would you sue over it? Or would you be happy enough with a free bumper case to make up for the glitch? (That is, if Apple ever decides to offer them. So far, it’s not.) There’s a contingency of people out there who think nothing less than a full recall is in order. Where do you stand on the issue?

Here’s one last question: Obviously problems and the negative press that results often tend to get the most attention, but is there anyone out there who isn’t suffering through serious glitches with their new iPhone 4? Let us know in the comments.

(By the way, in case any of you are interested in contacting KCR directly, you can do that by clicking this link.)

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