Bricked phone with broken home button, what to do???? Help!

[Dosedmonkey]

So my girlfriends telephone is a Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-I9100

Its had a unresponsive home button for a while now. But this morning, it suddenly decided to become bricked, stucked looping on the start up screen. I'm not sure if this is due to the fact the battery has seemed to be loosing performance lately or not.

Can anyone tell me in lame terms how I can get in to recovery mode, or fix this start up problem/bricked, with a non-working home button.

What is the usual life span on a Galaxy 2? The girlfriend has only had this phone for 15 months, and she keeps it in her bag normally, not treated that bad, would get more abuse in my trouser pocket I think.

Cheers.
Matt

 

[Dosedmonkey]

UPDATE:

I have downloaded Odin, figuring I need to do something with this, it is really hard to find a straight forward tutorial on google for this problem, any pointers?

This seems to be a good introduction to Odin; [REF] Guide to the Galaxy S II and Android (04/10/11) - xda-developers

But still a mystery what ROM I should use, is stock rom even the right thing for rebooting my phone.

Okay on this page; Galaxy S II I9100 Firmware update
I have found Entel PCS Chile Roms, which is what I believe my girlfriends phone needs (As her network is Entel from Chile),

Now struggling to get the phone in to download mode.
Is the only option to get the home button fixed? I seem to have wasted my afternoon here... :-\

 

[Tekkent]

we are currently in the same boat.....

sigh, based on my research, having a USB Jig will force the device in download mode despite having the home button fixed. Hope other will comment regarding this as I myself am not sure what to do.