IPhone 3GS iOS 6.1.2 Update Fail

Question

Following my original post this evening at https://discussions.apple.com/message/21290768#21290768
I have new issue now.
Hoping iOS 6.1.2 update would solve the original issue I plugged my phone into iTunes to update, but the update failed.
I received an error code -1 which I understand to be a hardware issue after searching online. I have tried to resolve the problem by starting the phone both in DFU and recovery mode to update, neither of which worked.
My phone is stuck with the iTunes logo and usb cable screen which tells me to plug it into iTunes. I can't restart the phone to get back to what small functionally I has before attempting to update to iOS 6.1.2.
MY PHONE WAS PERFECTLY FINE BEFORE iOS 6.1 WAS INSTALLED, NOW I HAVE NO CAPABILITY TO USE IT AS AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE AT ALL!

Answer 1

I have the same type of problem. I clicked to upgrade to 6.1.2, it downloaded the program, it extracted the software, then gave the message that it was verifying the iPhone restore with Apple, then failed. The message is that "The iPhone cannot be restored at this time because the iPhone software update server could not be contacted or is temporarily unavailable."
Looking at the logs, there is a lot of activity with the update server, but at the very end it makes a 'personalized bundle' for the upgrade, then a particular server can't be reached to authenticate it and quits the process. Quel drag.
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: amai: _AMAuthInstallBundleCreateServerRequestDictionary: using UniqueBuildID <CFData 0x7fd2cc5a4b00 [0x7fff7e4adfa0]>{length = 20, capacity = 20, bytes = 0x16c8202f9f54546c0f0bc02482d1872fb9667811}
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: amai: AMAuthInstallRequestSendSync: SSO function returned NULL, SSO disabled.
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: amai: tss_submit_job: SendHttpRequest failed 404
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: amai: AMAuthInstallRequestSendSync: failed tss submission: Server not reachable
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: amai: AMAuthInstallApCreatePersonalizedResponse: server request error: Server not reachable
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: amai: AMAuthInstallBundlePersonalizePartial: failed to create ap ticket
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: failed to personalize the restore bundle: Server not reachable
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: AMRAuthInstallDeletePersonalizedBundle
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1c5c3]: AMRecoveryModeDeviceCopyAuthInstallPreflightOptions: failed to personalize bundle
2013-02-21 00:21:27.000 iTunes[391:1e553]: iTunes: Restore error 1638