My iphone broke during ios 5 update

Has this happened to anyone else?  I finally decided to update to iOS 5 and my phone would not restore following the update.  I did some troubleshooting and tried a number of things and finally brought it to the genius bar.  They said the USB is a "fickle device" and must have lost power during the process... This must have fried my hardware and it would be $150 to do a hardware swap.  I understand that my warranty was up (a few weeks ago, of course) and I do have insurance through my cell phone carrier, but it still seems a little ridiculous to pay for something that happened when I was doing what my iTunes prompted me to do every time I plugged my phone in to charge/sync.  I used all Apple products, have done all updates for my MacBook and iTunes, and used the USB provided with the phone.  Just frustrated, I guess...