HT201210 iphone won't charge or restore, keep getting error message

Question

Last night I plugged my iPhone 4 into the APPLE wall charger and it would not recognize it to charge it, I unplugged it and plugged my iPad into the same charger and it worked so it was clearly my phone.  I called my service provider because I was going out of town today and it was already late at night. I was going to re-activate my old iPhone 3 until I could take it in and get it looked at....that was a nightmare....it's always a sad day when a consumer knows more about a product then the person selling them......she told me to take my sim card out of my iPhone 4 and just put it into my iPhone 3 and it would work, there was no need to call in....seriously??? They are TWO DIFFERENT cards that don't work in one another....if it was that simple would I have really called in the first place.....UGH! ANYWAYS..................so after she hooked up my old iPhone 3 to my husbands account and disconnected his iPhone 4S.....she is real swift.....I put my sim card in my husband's phone to get through the day! WIth my iPhone 4 only have 9% battery left I turned it off and left it over night.  Then this morning while it was turned off I plugged it back into the same charger and the apple sign appeared.....so that would tell me that it's not the charging port that is the problem....except it still won't recognize the charger? I have done a reset...hold the home and power button at the same time with no luck, called apple and followed their instructions of holding the home button and plugging it into the USB port that is hooked to the computer to do a restore, it makes it through like it's going to restore and then I get the following message: The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occured (1604)
If anyone has any ideas please let me know.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hello tsugi1002,
It sounds like your iPhone 4S is not charging when plugged into your computer.  I found an article with some steps that might help with this.  I recommend reviewing the steps in the sections titled "Battery does not charge from the USB power adapter" and "Will not turn on, will not turn on unless connected to power, or unexpected power off" in the following article:
iPhone: Hardware troubleshooting
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2802
Thank you for posting in the Apple Support Communities. 
Best,
Sheila M.