And I don't mean you have a lot of apps. I've got a 3GS that "died" on my wife (read: she got tired of it and wanted the 4G so it "stopped working" for her ) that I have been trying to use. I tried jail breaking it. No luck. I tried restoring it. Ain't happening. I handed it off to a guy from work who said he knew a thing or two about them. That only made it worse. It's pretty much stuck in a DFU loop now.

So, anyone really savvy with these things that thinks they might be able to resurrect it from the dead?

I'm on your wife's side on this one - if she was trying to get the newer model, she would wait a few weeks for the 5.

Did I mention that the whole "my phone stopped working" thing went down about 8 months ago?

That fact aside, I never try to buy anything right after the initial release. Nothing good every comes of it. A few examples:
iPhone 4, signal issues was it?
6.0 PowerStroke, EGR coolers
Facebook IPO, "hey, stocks are supposed to go up not down"
Windows Vista, a shudder at the thought

Never be a beta tester.

Basically the whole intent on getting this phone back up and running is to jail break it, unlock it, and hopefully wind up with something I can carry with me when I make the occasional trip to Deutschland to crash on Jesus_Man's couch und eat kartoffeln mit käse whilst laughing at all of the exit signs that read "Ausfhart".

Have you tried iReb? Has some built in fixes for DFU loop issues after attempting to jail break.

So, I still haven't resolved my iPhone issues. I'm content with just having a POS phone at the moment. On a similar note, during my recent trip to Nevada I got a wild hair and decided "it was time for a new phone". So I drove to a nearby AT&T. I've been out of contract now for 6 months so no issues on the upgrade. I spot the iPhone 4 on the shelf for 99 bucks and say, "I'll take one". The kid behind the counter says, "Great. That will be 150 bucks." Now, I'm not math genius, but a 50% tax rate did not seem right. The kid tells me in Nevada, you pay tax on the retail price, not on the purchase price. So that extra 50 bucks was the 10% tax on the 499.99 that the phone retails for. I immediately left, went to Radio Shack and bought a portable back up battery for my phone, and didn't think about a new phone for the rest of the trip.

Wow, that's crazy. Never heard of that. I have family in NV, I'll ask them next time I talk to them.

Have you looked on Craigslist?

I'm either going to pick up the iPhone 5 in a few weeks or pick up a used phone from CL. I'm really not looking forward to rolling in to another contract at the moment, so I will have to see what great technology leaps are in the iP5. If I go the CL route, I'll also be looking at Galaxy S, Galaxy Note, and HTCs.