Any thoughts would be helpful.

This is what I can tell you. Power button seems to not work. Having said that I rarely ever use it.

Today I was sent some kind of an apple map link via text from a family member trying to give me their location.
At the point of receiving it, with out opening it my phone seems to be Rooted (what ever that means) and will not do anything. I can get the little android man laying on his back with the door on his chest opened and getting the yellow triangle with the black exclamation mark in it. Other than that nothing. Can not power off.
How bad is it?

btw this model you cannot remove the battery like many other phones.

Is your data backed up? You have a few options; Forced Reboot, Soft Reset, Factory Reset or External Reset. You may need to reinstall apps and data depending on what you ultimately need to do...

Reset Functions here --> https://www.motorola-support.c...-5th-gen/topic/reset

Global Site --> https://motorola-global-portal.../a_id/116319/p/10165

Thanks nhr, unfortunately the phone is on and the restart button is depressed. But I did nothing that would of caused that. I did not depress it at all. So weird.
It is like that text message caused that and I cannot do anything to the phone now. It just blinks every few seconds and shows the a blue screen with the Motorola M on it.

quote:

my phone seems to be Rooted (what ever that means)

It means that a former owner has unlocked the root account. Root is a Unix concept, AKA the superuser for what is now sometimes called the administrator. The root account can do lots of stuff a regular user account cannot, alter/replace system files, etc. It is not uncommon in the Android world for people to do this so as to install or remove software not allowed by the phone manufacturer/cell provider. In, and of itself, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, and may facilitate a recovery of your phone's function.

Generally, when some one roots a phone, they will install a custom boot loader and perhaps a custom recovery partition. Having these available will protect against a vendor update from undoing the effort spent in rooting the phone (by over-writing critical files). It is not unknown for these installs to not be compatible with other software on the phone and leave it in a state where it won't boot.

Recovering from a custom install gone wrong requires a certain amount of knowledge and familiarity, but I wouldn't call it difficult. There are many online resources available such as the xda-developers website that will point you in the right direction. Be prepared to deal with concepts and terminology that is not obvious to the already informed, and young hacker types who revel in knowing things that others do not (and who are delighted to keep it that way). There are some nice guys on that site too, but patience for those who won't do their homework is very thin.

The "little android man laying on his back with the door on his chest opened" sounds to me like you are booting to the boot loader. Usually this can be done by holding down specific "magic" buttons while powering on, but it can be set as the default. The open chest is supposed to indicate that you can install software at this point, e.g. through the "Android Debug Bridge," a way to connect the device to a desktop computer connected via USB. Most custom boot loaders (and some vendor boot loaders) have options that can be exercised via an on-screen menu, accessed by the volume keys.

Similarly, most phones have a "recovery" facility that can be run with a different set of magic keys at power-on time.

All of this is very specific to the make and model of phone, every vendor is different. Don't expect recipes or software intended for a Samsung to work with Motorola's firmware. But, since the required functions exist in both environments, learning about one can help with understanding the other. It really isn't any different than booting a computer, first you have the pre-boot, then the boot, then the loader, then the OS. All this happens before the user sees anything on the screen (like a login prompt).

Press and hold the “Volume Down + Power” buttons until the device shuts off (10-20 seconds). You 'should' then be able to restart it.

Nope, just brings up the little android man on his back. And you cannot access any of the commands on the android man screen.

quote:

unfortunately the phone is on and the restart button is depressed.

Have you tried poking restart button with a tip of a pen a few times.

Thanks Jelly, to no avail. I appreciate the suggestions guys.

removing the case may provide better functionality of buttons!

fwiw:
i reboot my cell phones once a week!

Yeah, in looking at this thread again, I think you have a broken/stuck VolUp and/or VolDown button. When the phone powers on, it "sees" the extra button depressed and goes into the boot loader screen (like it is supposed to). The boot loader options are usually selected by the volume buttons so you're out of luck there too.

Tanking off any protective case might free them up. Taking off the backplate might allow access to the microswitches under the buttons to work them/free them with a needle-type pick/probe. Removing the battery may be a good idea before you start probing things inside the phone.

Otherwise, take it to your provider's retail location, or a cell phone kiosk in your local mall, it should not be an expensive repair.

This article discusses the bootloader, and how to deal with it, but I think you are way past that at this point. It may at least help you to talk to a repair tech about what you are seeing.

Thanks Arch. While your links are informative definitely over my head technically. I thinking taking it to some place to inspect and possibly repair makes the most sense at this point.

The weird thing was a rarely ever turn the phone off so using the power button is not something that happens once in a blue moon.

The weird I phone map link seemed to kill it. But maybe that was a coincidence. But once that happened the power button is definitely F---ed up.