Steve Jobs held a press conference today about the iPhone 4 reception problems. It resulted in free cases for iPhone 4 owners and waived return fees for unsatisfied buyers. He also mentioned Nokia during the conference by saying, “You can go on the web and look at pictures of Nokia phones that ship with stickers on the back that say ‘don’t touch here’.” A couple of hours after the Apple event, Nokia released a statement.

In short, Nokia says antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, but they design their phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases. If they are ever in conflict, they prioritize antenna performance over physical design. Read the full statement below.

Antenna design is a complex subject and has been a core competence at Nokia for decades, across hundreds of phone models. Nokia was the pioneer in internal antennas; the Nokia 8810, launched in 1998, was the first commercial phone with this feature.

Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying human behavior, including how people hold their phones for calls, music playing, web browsing and so on. As you would expect from a company focused on connecting people, we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.

In general, antenna performance of a mobile device/phone may be affected with a tight grip, depending on how the device is held. That’s why Nokia designs our phones to ensure acceptable performance in all real life cases, for example when the phone is held in either hand. Nokia has invested thousands of man hours in studying how people hold their phones and allows for this in designs, for example by having antennas both at the top and bottom of the phone and by careful selection of materials and their use in the mechanical design.

I’ve had so many Nokia devices, but don’t remember finding any stickers that Steve mentioned. Have you?