Successful jailbroken iPhone ran out of battery and stuck in constant reboot with worn sleep/wake button I successfully jailbroke my iPhone 3GS 5.1.1 untethered using Absinthe. I had been using the phone for a handful of days. Last night however the phone ran out of battery.
A few hours later, I plugged my phone to charge to find that when it got to the booting process with the apple logo, it stuck for a good ten minutes and then reboots. I let it reboot all night to see if anything changed.
There are a few things to note:

Before that phone ran out of battery, voice control was getting activated without me pressing the home button. If voice control did not get activated, then the music app would play a track. This happened twice during the day before the phone battery died in the evening.
I don't know if it is related. I blew on the button in case any dust was stuck. I also pressed the home in repeated succession to see if that would do anything. It eventually went away not sure how. Another reason that voice control and the music app activated because both happened when the phone was in a pocket.

Another thing to note is that my sleep/wake button is numbed from excess use. The button does not work and hasn't for over a year.

Finally the odd thing about when the phone shut down, the rotating circle did not appear. Just a black screen appeared and I don't recall a 10% warning coming up either but I am not certain of that.


My question is can I hard reset without using the sleep/wake button? Thank you
You say that your "display off button is numbed from excess use".  Apple calls this the "Sleep/Wake Button"

One of the functions of the Sleep/Wake button is to power off the device.  Another is to hard reset the device.  A hard reset is performed by holding down the Sleep/Wake Button and the Home button until the device shuts off.

It seems likely based on what you've told me that the numbed Sleep/Wake Button has started intermittently being activated.  This, along with a stuck Home button is probably activating the hard reset function.  

I say this because you said that the voice control was starting on its own (stuck Home button) and that the "when the phone shut down, the rotating circle did not appear."
This is exactly how a hard reset works.

This would also explain why you didn't see the 10% battery life warning and why, if the hard reset keeps getting activated, your phone wouldn't finish booting.  You can activate the hard reset while the phone is in the process of booting.