Well, I have an 825, and it has the same problem you had, complete with the alternate "recovery" screen. Mine says "Firmware Upgrade System" instead of the recovery version. It also has a version number under the title of 1.0.0.2 and the date 2008/12/25.
I sure don't want to turn my new 825 into a brick quite this quickly, but I'm rapidly running out of options.