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After a long and hard discussion around the iPhone 4 antenna reception issue, finally Apple released the official letter to clarify the issue. However seems like Apple still didn’t want to admit that these are all their fault. Instead, Apple still tried to convince public that iPhone 4 is still the best smartphone ever and tried to say that this is just a small mistake of signal strength bars calculation formula and can easily fixed with a software update. The apology were written in the last part of the letter as if this is not a serious problem.

According to Apple, there’s a mistake of the formula used to calculate the display of bars of signal strength and this mistake has been present since the original iPhone. That means people have been using “defect” products in the last few years but they adored it.

Below is the quote of the letter from Apple, read the full letter on Apple’s website!

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

Well, at least they promise to fix the issue. My question is, how come the company like Apple who i believe has one of the best research center and labs just found that mistake on this generation of iPhone 4, more than three years later since the first iPhone introduced in January 2007.

So let’s see what Apple can do with this issue. And since the software update will out within a few weeks, for those of you who own the iPhone 4 with this kind of problem, you probably have to be patient and for the moment just try to live with that or return your “undamaged” iPhone to any Apple Retail Store as Apple suggested.