Can I beat the Apple Store guy?

My wife's iPhone 3g started doing some funny things 3 months ago. First of all it would stop charging at around 1/8th battery leaving her all of 5 minutes of use while unplugged. It wasn't being recognized by iTunes so there was no possibility of connecting that way. I took it to the Apple Store guy and he told me it was a hopeless case, I tried to get more information out of him but he remained silent. Shortly after this I bought her an iPhone 4 which is working great. My only problem is that I can't give up on that 3g! It's sad and pathetic looking and I feel like I could fix it. So here are the things I did that didn't work.

1) Purchased a new battery. - That only proved to me that the other battery was fine as the phone continued to do what it had been doing.

2) Purchased a new complete dock connector (dock connector, microphone etc.) from ifixit. The installation went well and I was very happy to see that my iPhone was being recognized by iTunes suddenly! Unfortunately as it was going through the restore process it failed and the "Error 23" message came up, confusing the beJesus out of me. So I took it all apart and checked all the connections. After all of that it is worse than before. It won't even power up from the computer and if I plug it into the wall outlet the apple logo comes up but after 20 seconds or so it shuts off completely. Since the computer port doesn't power it up I can no longer try the restore process.

Is it over? Should I bury it in a shoebox at the Best Buy recycle graveyard? Is it worth anything?

Thanks,

James

Simran!

Thanks a lot! It took me a long time to 1) find the old battery and then 2) to find some time to work on the phone BUT it worked!

It was the dock connector the whole time. I appreciate you taking the time to answer me last month.

James