With earlier iOS iterations, a manipulation of the sleep/wake and home buttons would abort iPhone recovery mode. There are plenty of helpful youTube video simplifications and mini tutorials on this subject, none of which apply to the newer (e.g. 3.1.3) devices. I spent hours sifting thru them and after attempting all combinations of holding down and sequentially releasing and reapplying buttons while counting for n seconds, I was still stuck in recovery loop with the Connect to iTunes screen. Here’s the fix:Download iRecovery iHackintosh iRecovery Package for Windows & Mac, which is a compressed RAR file. Likely you will have to download a utility app to extract from it.
To start iRecovery on a mac, simply open the command line application (Terminal), and then DRAG the iRecovery file from the location you’ve extracted it and DROP it inside the Terminal window A command line is automatically written. Now type the following:
- Append ‘-s’ so that the command line now reads ‘irecovery -s’ “hit enter”
- setenv auto-boot true “hit enter”
- saveenv “hit enter”
- /exit “hit enter”
Finally, reboot your iPhone by pressing and holding the sleep/power button and the home button until the iPhone display turns off (black). Release the buttons.
This – saved the day – procedure courtesy of Rafay on this forum was found after exhaustive trial & error Google searching and worked perfectly.