As stated earlier, the only reason this has become such a big issue is because of Apple's profile. What other phone company do you know of that has shipped over 3m phones in 3 weeks, and not only that... but for a highly publicised phone.
I own the iPhone 4, and have had all other generations of the iPhone too... this issue is true... for ALL of them, even right back to my Sony Ericcson P900. I live in a very weak signal area in the UK, and the only way I can get a signal in my house, is to place my phone on the XStand, which for all other iPhones, I only used to get about 1-2 bars and often dropped the call as soon as I lifted the phone to answer a call. On the iPhone 4, yes, it does drop bars... but I'm now getting 3-4 bars, and once I'm on a call... it holds signal a lot better than anything else I've ever used.
From what I can see though, it takes a lot for a perfectionist company like Apple (I know they have a lot of flaws), to call a media event, and for Steve to stand in front of the press and admit to screwing up, be it in software related issues or whatever... I couldn't see many other companies willing to do that... they'd just bury their head. I don't think this would ever have been such an issue had they got their initial algorithm correct for displaying the proper signal strength.
As for comments to 'less support calls than what applecare were getting' in the reports, I don't know about you, but up until AppleCare was created... I'd be back banging on the door of where I bought the device. I hated the thought of having to phone a manufacturers support line, cause you often just got passed about, or got some foreign call centre with people you couldn't understand or couldn't understand you, so I could quite easily believe that support calls to the manufacturer were lower.