IPhone :: Home Button Stopped Working And Voice Control Comes On Automatically?

so over the weekend, while I was away from home, the home button on my iPhone 4 stopped working. It happened suddenly, and the only preceding events I can think of were that (1) we had heavy rain but I kept the phone in my pocket and neither my pocket nor the phone were wet when I took it out after the rain had passed (2) I downloaded the F1 timing app which initially had some crashing issues. I'm not sure if either of these contributed but it's possible.While the home button wouldn't work at all when pressed, I found that the voice control was starting automatically (and calling my contacts without me knowing). This would suggest a long press of the home button I think however I couldn't replicate it with the button. To avoid calling more contacts from my pocket I turned the phone off but it turned itself straight back on and always went straight to voice control after starting up. I finally got around this by leaving the phone on flight mode while not in use. I also found the accessibility setting to have an on-screen home button which made the phone slightly usable but not ideal.

When I charged the phone that evening it came up with the recovery screen requesting that I plug into iTunes. As I was away and without my laptop I was not able to do this but got through the weekend by cancelling lots of voice control pop ups and a lot of flight mode use. Now I'm home I have connected to iTunes and a restore was required. I followed this right through, the restore completes and when it reconnects to iTunes it says it needs to restore again. At this stage I can unplug it, turn it off and on again and use it.If it's turned on while unplugged it will start ok and then can be connected to iTunes and synced but the voice control will still start automatically after turning on and the home button does not work at all.If it's turned on while plugged in it will be in recovery mode and request a restore again.

Info:
iPhone 4, iOS 5.1