While many of Apple’s customers are complaining about the antenna problem of Apple’s iPhone 4 handset, one user has designed his own solution.

Rather than spend a further £25 on buying a rubber bumper to fit around the bottom of the iPhone, an enterprising customer – Oliver Nelson – has come up with his own idea.

This is simply a coloured rubber band which you often get from charities. Holes are cut into the band for the various connections such as headphone jacks. The band is then fitted around the handset.

Meanwhile, Apple has finally been forced to admit there is a problem. An official announcement from Apple said: “We were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them.”

The statement put out by Apple however falls short of dealing with the specific reception problem customers and others have highlighted, blaming the weak signals on other factors. The company said instead: “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.”

While the company is working on a solution to the problem, they have also said that unhappy customers can return the handset.

iPhone image courtesy of Apple.