Chosen Solution
Phone seems completely dead, tried hard reset no luck. Connected phone to computer iTunes reports phone in recovery mode. After restore iTunes still reports phone in recovery mode. All the while blank screen and no response from phone at all.
it seems to be that the device will only boot to DFU mode. This usually happens when the Flash image of the phone is damaged, because it cant pick up any software in the device. logic board level failure is usually the outcome of this, but at my store, i would still attempt to replace the screen to see if that gets an image, and go from there.
