I already did the rice thing for like 5 hours, turned it off as soon as it happened, etc etc.

So my phone is having the "SIM Fail" problem right now. I was reading online and everyone has been saying that I should restore my iPhone. Well, I have iOS 5.1.1, and in order to restore my iPhone iTunes says that I need to install the latest version of iTunes.

Well, I have an iCloud backup of my phone, and would like to install iOS 5.1.1 instead of iOS 6, so I tried erasing everything on the phone through Settings -> Reset, but for some reason it won't entirely delete everything. It just shows the swirling spiral nonstop until I hold the Home button and the iPhone sleep button at the same time to manually reset the phone. Then, the phone loads up with no phone service, but everything else. Basically, nothing deletes except for the fact that I have service, and I need to reactivate the phone. So, that's where I am right now. I'm trying to activate it and restore from iCloud, but since I haven't fully deleted everything, I can't get to that option.

tl;dr: SIM Fail problem, tried erasing everything on iPhone, but it only deletes service. How can I restore from iCloud and then install 5.1.1 again instead of using 6.0?

Update 1: I have been trying to restore my iPhone, but it keeps telling me that my iPhone is too hot to operate, which is weird since it doesn't feel hot to the touch at all. It's as cool as when I got it. Because of this, it won't sync with iTunes or restore anything. Any ideas?