phone is bricked, wont get out of recovery mode

Your iPhone has a major problem for some reason. Recovery mode usually requires a restore with iTunes. If you are unable to restore your iPhone with iTunes and your iPhone is less than a year old, it remains under warranty. You can call AppleCare to handle everything over the phone, or make an appointment at an Apple store if there is one nearby.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1808

I got home from work to take my phone out of my pocket and realised that mine too has faulted. What's strange is that my battery level is also at 46%!? How can a phone just fault over what appears to be nothing? iTunes will not detect it, and due to the passcode it cannot connect to it...

I will book an appointment at the Genius bar, but surely this cannot just be a major coincidence that I am experiencing the SAME problems with the SAME battery level...

Message was edited by: JonsterUK

How can a phone just fault over what appears to be nothing?

Because it appears to be nothing to you - not unless you have some sort of Superman x-ray vision that can detect and see a software problem or a hardware problem through the iPhone.

The passcode is not required when connecting your iPhone to iTunes on the same computer you normally connect and sync your iPhone with - not unless there is a major problem with your iPhone, and apparently there is - with the software or hardware.

If your phone is in recovery mode, all apple can do to attempt to fix it is restore it, so essentially your data is already lost.
If there was data on your phone apple would wipe it clean anyway. 🙂

Lot's can be done, but I would say that your data is lost unless you have performed regular backups.