iPhone 3GS won't restore, stuck on Apple logo

Hold power and home button together till apple goes off the screen then wait about 2 mins the apple should come back on then the phone

Hi,
I'm experiencing the exact same problem here with an iPhone 3GS 16GB that i had jailbroken. Suddenly a few days ago it stopped working, showing just the apple logo for a lot of time, then every once in a while the screen flashes for a second and then it goes back to the apple logo.

I've tried to restore it by putting it in DFU and do a clean reinstall of the firmware to iOS 5.1 with iTunes, but all i get is that iTunes would recognize it in recovery mode, lets me restore the firmware and all (the iPhone screen shows a progress bar under the apple logo) but then when it finishes the iPhone gets stuck again to the apple logo, even though at this point iTunes recognizes it as a full working iPhone (iTunes shows the screen where it says the iPhone name, cell number, serial number and the GB bar)

I've tried this process several times but i always get the same result: iPhone stuck in a endless cycle of apple logo for a lot of minutes, then flashes, and back to apple logo.
I don't know what to do at this point. has anybody got any suggestion for doing a clean reset of the device?

It probably has the ipad baseband installed that's why the restore will never complete.

Applejuiced said:

It probably has the ipad baseband installed that's why the restore will never complete.

Click to expand...

If this is correct, then you need to cook a custom IPSW for that. Right?

Kyotoma said:

If this is correct, then you need to cook a custom IPSW for that. Right?

Click to expand...

Yes, and most likelly since they tried restoring to stock firmware they will need to reflash the ipad baseband again and install ultrasnow for the phone to recognize any sim.

Hi,
Could you please explain all the steps I have to follow in order to get my iPhone to work again?

anyway I don't think that i had the ipad baseband installed on it because i bought it already sim unlocked (since it was an european model that wasn't locked to any specific carrier) unless it automatically installed the ipad basedand when i jailbroken it?

Gibsonsoup said:

Hi,
Could you please explain all the steps I have to follow in order to get my iPhone to work again?

anyway I don't think that i had the ipad baseband installed on it because i bought it already sim unlocked (since it was an european model that wasn't locked to any specific carrier) unless it automatically installed the ipad basedand when i jailbroken it?

Click to expand...

Plug it to tinyumbrella and it should list the firmware and baseband version its on.
Let us know what it displays.

The firmware version is the 5.1 as I've restored the device to it with iTunes (the restore process works perfectly fine, the iphone gets recognized, the bar loads, and it restarts as it should do normally after the restore, but instead of loading the OS normally, it just gets stuck on the apple logo again)

The installed baseband version is 05.16.05-6.4_M3S2

Gibsonsoup said:

The firmware version is the 5.1 as I've restored the device to it with iTunes (the restore process works perfectly fine, the iphone gets recognized, the bar loads, and it restarts as it should do normally after the restore, but instead of loading the OS normally, it just gets stuck on the apple logo again)

The installed baseband version is 05.16.05-6.4_M3S2

Click to expand...

Oh, I see.
So you dont have to mess with any custom firmware or any of that.
I'd try a DFU restore on another computer to see if that makes any difference, if still nothing there might be a hardware issue with the phone.

I've tried the DFU restore on both my imac and macbook and got the same result... at first I thought at a hardware issue too but It seems too weird to me that the computer recognizes it as a perfectly working device showing me the normal iPhone screen on iTunes... i'm not a technician but i guess that if the iPhone had an hardware issue, say for example to the mother board, the computer wouldn't be able to access all the data such as the iPhone name, serial number, the GBs bar, etc... as it show with any working device on iTunes