Ok, so I went to the Apple store to get my phone replaced. The first thing they tried was to recover the phone and they got the same error I got. They then asked me if I was still under warranty and I said no. They said it would be $199 to replace phone. I was shocked. All I did was plug in a working phone and it bricked it! I asked to speak to manager. I pleaded my case to him and after a while of back and forth, me being very nice and non argumentative, he agreed to replace it for free. Before he did agree, he tried one more thing. He talked to one of his genius’’ and they said it looked like some of the USB contacts had corrosion on them. He was going to have them try to clean them and see if that worked. Once the genius got into it, he realized it wasn’t corrosion. It was at that point that the manager agreed to replace it.
They said the that error 9 is a communication error, usually USB related. I told the manager that the person on the Apple support line said that maybe the iOS4 update did something that caused the USB to not work correctly. The manger at the store said there is no way that a software update could make the USB stop working and I agreed, but I said it was working perfectly before this all happened (on the way home, I really thought about it and a firmware update could mess up hardware). One of the reasons he agreed to replace it was the curious timing of when it happened. I’m just glad he did. They gave me a new (or refurbished, they didn’t know) 3G and installed IOS4 on it for me. I got home, plugged it in and recover everything. The only thing that I had to re-enter was some passwords. Whew…
So if you have this problem, I guess you will have to plead your case and get lucky. Unless, I guess, if apple finds the problem and fixes it. From everybody I talked with, they all feel it is some kind of hardware issue on the phone. Somehow, I guess the iOS4 update made it come to life.
Good luck!
Oh, and by the way, I was able to go into the Apple website tonight and order an iPhone 4 with a ship date of July 15.