Apple's resident antenna expert Ruben Caballero warned CEO Steve Jobs last year that using a bezel antenna in the iPhone 4 could create reception problems and dropped calls, according to an unattributed story put out by Bloomberg.

Another source told the wire service that an iPhone carrier said the same thing but Apple decided to go with the design rather than one of the alternatives it had in hand because it yielded a lighter, thinner and perforce sexier widget. Sexy widgets sell as the iPhone 4 proves.

Apple released its alleged software fix for the problem on Thursday ahead of its scheduled press conference on Friday. It's an operating system update called iOS 4.0.1 and contains a jimmied "formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display." InformationWeek says it makes the three lowest signal bars bigger but doesn't fix the problem and calls it "flat-out visual trickery."

Senator Charles Schumer (D, NY), vice-chairman of the Senate's Joint Economic Committee, has also gotten on Apple's case. He wrote Jobs a letter telling him Apple should "address this flaw in a transparent manner," repeating the company's earlier claim that it's "largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software." He wants a "clearly written explanation of the cause of the reception problem" along with a "public commitment to remedy it free-of-charge."

Did we mention that a class-action suit was in progress in Maryland before the fix came out. If InformationWeek and Bloomberg are right, the lawyers are going to have a field day.