Not a technical answer but if the phone is brand new and just died can you not get the receipt and take it back to where ever it was bought from and get a replacement? Or be able to take it to a SE service centre and get it checked there?

On the technical side, I think if the EPROM is corrupted then your phone will not turn on and appear to be dead. It works as a weird kind of safety measure if anything has happened to the EPROM. I believe that it is possible to get it flashed and repaired but not sure if it's do-able at home with that model, would need to dig around a bit to find out.