wet iPhone 4S partially boots, but won't restore - error 21 or error 1611

[thesav]

Hi, I have a friends white 16GB iPhone 4S which he got wet

My friend took this phone into a shop and due to the flash on the back of the camera being constantly on or flicking, had them remove the entire camera assembly - he's also since thrown this out. The iPhone is otherwise complete, but with no rear camera hardware module.

The iPhone currently boots to the apple logo and usually goes to the 'restore from iTunes' screen (with the iTunes logo and the USB cable pic). I can successfully get it into DFU mode and also have iTunes & Win7 detect the phone when it's plugged in in either restore or DFU modes. The problem is that every time i go to restore the phone from iTunes i get an error 21 or an error 1611 (but not both at the same time)...

I'm wondering if my restore problems could be due to the rear camera module not being plugged in anymore. If this is the case, would a replacement rear camera module from eBay or the like solve this issue?

Does anyone know if an iPhone can be restored without the camera module being attached?

Thanks very much
-Tristan