hold the home button while you put it on the dock to connect to computer, keep holding it till itunes reads it

i tunes recognizes the phone and it sycned the iphone but the phone shows just the apple logo

did you ever drop your phone captain?

I have the same problem for many days since I find the solution. Shutdown your iphone, plug it on wall adapter for hours and you will find it ready to work.
Mine freeze many times, and when I reset it stay stuck on apple logo. So I plug it to wall and after 10/15 minutes it boot well. Bizarre but it work.

no never dropped my phone ....
but plug it to the wall didnt help me

ok - this happened to me again, I've got a more accurate thing of what to do.

Make sure software is reinstalled. Leave it in its 'booting' state for 40 minutes minimum. Then do a reboot. What happens?

I posted this on the apple forums:

I had this exact same problem now twice and fixed it twice.

Basically the phone was stuck at the apple logo (5 mins or more), and having forcibly rebooted 10 times, I was worried. Even reinstalling the software didn't help - it reinstalled fine (by putting phone into recovery mode) but it never booted. Or so I thought

Leave the 'brick' booting unconnected to any power - wait at least 40 minutes on the apple logo.. It may come back to life after this - it did for me the first time this happened, although not sure how long it took as I fell asleep (and dreamt about broken iphones!), but the second time, I gave up waiting and did the usual press and hold the sleep/wake and home buttons to reboot the machine, and it will come back to life at the AT&T screen.

Hope this helps.

It happend to me once. I simply pressed and hold the sleep/wake and home buttons for like 3sec. (had to do it twice) and everything went ok

sometimes it's need to be plug on wall for 48/72 hours.
Plug on USB or Car charger don't work.

i had my iPhone for one night plugged into the wall but it shows still the applelogo