Have you any luck connecting through WinSCP? I had this same problem, it was because I didn't notice that while I was editing the springboard to use carrier logos (i am on an international sim), it was actually overwriting the next code ! What I did was just connect through WinSCP while it was stuck on the apple logo and replace my springboard with the original file and it worked thank God.
Pretty sure that he got it working, since he never came back, lol. For future reference though, I wonder if he had OpenSSH installed on the phone .. lol