ALoD? Help!

[explosivpotato]

Hello everyone,

Please bear with me, as this is a little long. I tried to include everything of importance.

I've been lurking in these forums for some time now, and until yesterday my iPhone 3G was (mostly) trouble free.


Well, I guess that had to end some time...

Here's the order of events:

I updated an app from the on-device app store, and it failed. Big whoop. Told me to try again on my computer. OK, I said, so I ignored it and figured I'd do it later.

Fast forward 2 hours, and I go to check my phone for messages and low and behold, the phone is DEAD. I mean, no response to the power switch, hard software reset (home + sleep buttons), NOTHING.

So, once I'm back to my girlfriend's parents house, I hooked it up to my powerbook to see if I could get any joy that way. Well, the apple logo popped up immediately, but quickly locked up both the phone and iTunes itself. After some cajoling, however, it did loosen up and rebooted to the slider screen.

Whooee! I thought. I figured I had dodged a bullet. The phone worked fine, I let it sync and back up (which only took 10 minutes!!) and it worked great playing Pandora and my own library all the way home (~2.5 hour drive).

Well, fast forward AGAIN to this morning, I woke up for class and the phone seemed normal. I saw I had text messages from when I was asleep, checked them, and then took a shower (phone was and has never been anywhere near liquids of any sort).

So, while about to go to class (which I am missing right now because of this, BTW), I pulled the phone off the charger and put it in my pocket. I thought all was well, until I tried to check the time before I left my apartment.

Guess what!!!? IT'S DEAD AGAIN. So, I hooked it up to the power brick. It gave me the Apple logo, and promptly crashed again. I tried hard-resetting it and connecting it to my PB, but it just does the same thing. If I leave it, it times out and shuts off without iTunes ever seeing it. I tried to put it in DFU mode (I think that's what it's called) with the sleep/home button trick. No joy. iTunes STILL doesn't see it. And if I pull it off the USB cable it dies like there's no battery (which there IS, my battery was GREAT! 6+ hours of intermittent internet/phone usage for over a day with 30%+ remaining!).

Now, this SOUNDS kinda like the ALoD problem I've been hearing, but for the life of me I can't seem to get iTunes to restore it!

EDIT: I JUST got iTunes to pick it up in recovery mode, but when it tries to restore it it spits out a 1604 error and fails. S**T!

I would just call Apple and be on tech support, but I HAVE NO OTHER PHONE!! I live alone with my cockatiel, and God knows she can't help. Guess I should have opted for the home phone bundle with Comcast..

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm sorry my first post here is so long, but this is RIDICULOUS! Why would my non-jailbroken previously wonderful phone just commit hari-kari like this? I only had 3 or so pages of apps, most of them free, and have NEVER had a problem like this!

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer, I'm running a 17" PB G4 on 10.4.11 if that helps, I had an original iPhone and upgraded on launch day. I can't believe I stood in line for 9 hours for THIS!

EDIT (again): Running 2.0.2 if that makes a difference. Probably not, but it was worth a shot.

 

[explosivpotato]

Quick update...

Okay, after 3 tries iTunes FINALLY agreed to restore the phone. It just went through the firmware re-install and let me select a backup. I'm crossing my fingers, and finally breathing again.

Sorry about the long first post, but DAMN. I was almost to the (rumored) 2.1 release tomorrow without any such problems!! Guess it wasn't meant to be.

So can anyone who's had this problem confirm that it was the fabled ALoD I keep reading about? It sounds like it except for the complete loss of power. It's almost like the PMU took a dump.

 

[explosivpotato]

Ok, I realize that this is probably a repeat thread to a lot of you, and probably not the most interesting topic (considering the lack of replies), but my phone now loses all power once a day and I have to restore to get it functional again.

After I restore it will work for about a day or so, then the next time I plug it in to my computer or power brick, it gives me the ALoD until I either reboot in restore mode or unplug it, at which point it shuts off permanently and completely until I connect it to an external power source again.

I'll try calling tech support as soon as I have a phone again, but I'm not sure what they'll say other than "call on another phone," which I don't have.

 

[Crevice]

I have the ALoD about 6 times, all in the past 2 weeks. It sucks but just try and wait it out till friday and see if the new update helps, if not go back to apple store like I will do if it still messes up. I can recommend if you have problems, that you should stop restoring from backup and do a fresh restore as a new phone. Sometimes backups have errors in them that will continue to freeze your phone, even if everything seems to work ok. But to me your issue seems to be a little more serious, so you may actually need a new phone, is there an apple store near you? If not looks like you may need to borrow a friends phone and call apple (or phone booth).

 

[explosivpotato]

Thanks for the reply, I just finished restoring as a new phone and reloading all of my contacts and music. It seems ok now, and hopefully this solves the problem. There's no Apple stores within a 45 minute drive, so I'd like to avoid that. Hopefully it won't come to that.

Better than when I lived in new orleans. There weren't any apple stores within 2 states!