Apple's interim fix was to give all the owners a case.

AFAIK the cases worked because they prevented the hand from making electrical contact with the metal parts

Only if you define UX as including all the really hard stuff that goes into engineering the device, and not just the externalities. A car that looks nice but doesn't go isn't as important as a car that goes but doesn't look nice.

I don‘t remember it at all, but based on the post it sounds like it was just a UI quirk that made the signal loss look much worse than it really was.

I‘m guessing gripping any phone will drop signal strength, but the iPhone made itself look worse.