Facing the threat of a class action lawsuit, Apple now admits its new iPhone 4 has reception problems and are promising a fix soon. But there’s a catch: Apple continues to deny the problem is with the phone’s hardware.

Rather than admit they rushed a defective product to market, Apple released a press statement today attributing the problem to the way the signal bars are being displayed.

“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.“

Clearly, Apple doesn’t think very highly of their customers’ IQs. But then again, Apple’s customers do line up like brainless sheeple to buy their products.

Apple’s evasive attitude is consistent with CEO Steve Jobs repeated denials that a problem exists with the phone’s reception. A law firm is in the process of building a class action lawsuit against Apple.

From CNN.com:

After initially dismissing the reports about the iPhone 4 antenna reception issue, Apple has officially admitted it exists, promising a software fix in a couple of weeks. There’s a catch, though.

Apple’s promised fix may not be good news for users experiencing the problem. Apple claims it has erroneously calculated the formula which displays signal bars on the iPhone, and therefore the iPhone has been showing too many bars in areas with weak signal strength.

Unfortunately, this seems like Apple is only acknowledging one part of the problem. Anandtech’s in-depth analysis showed that the signal drop when you grip the iPhone 4 by its lower-right side is very real.