Today at a special press conference on Apple’s Cupertino CA campus, Steve Jobs announced that there will be no hardware fix for the iPhone 4 . Instead, Apple will be giving out free rubber “bumpers” as a fix to the reception issue to all users who buy the iPhone 4. Refunds will be available for those who already bought cases to fix the issue as well.

During the first half of the conference Jobs explained how this issue occurs with almost all smart phones. He claimed that the issue is not as bad as it is perceived to be explaining that the problem is with bar algorithm. The iPhone 4 would show 5 bars of reception when in reality there may have only been 3 or 2 bars of service available. This gives the appearance that the phone is losing 5 bars of service when in reality only 3 or 2 bars are being lost. Apparently yesterday’s iOS4 update solved this problem.

He also showed other data (AppleCare customer service reports and comparisons to the iPhone 3GS) to minimize the appearance of the issue while claiming that smart phones “aren’t perfect.” During the Q&A section Jobs and his comrades, in a hailstorm of excuses, went on to call out some of the critical articles written by Bloomberg and the New York Times, calling them “false” and “total bull &$#@”.

Though a nice gesture, this “fix” misses the point and will force those 80% of iPhone 4 buyers who walked out of the iStore without getting a bumper or case to have to use one so that the phone works. Though some questions were answered, the conference seemed to be full of excuses and attempts to convince the public that the problem isn’t really that big. We will just have to wait to see the effect it will have on iPhone 4 sales and returns.