This is a Motorola Razr Maxx (not HD), in service since 2012. Not rooted. Posting problem here because I wonder if there's a brute force method of solving this problem, and the Verizon & Motorola forums have been useless.
I powered off the phone a few days ago, and a minute later, powered up again. The reboot got past some of the animated nonsense and got stuck at the "red eye" stage. If I do nothing, it stays there until the battery is dead (which is where the phone is at the moment). After recharging and trying again, I can hold the power button and get the phone to restart, but it goes back into the same loop. I found that there's a brief moment before the restart when the screen goes black and by pressing the appropriate buttons, I can get to the recovery menu. I've tried cleaning the cache partition and doing a factory reset, but these don't solve the problem. Someone at the Verizon store tried the same routine, to no avail.
All apps came from the Google play store. None were allowed to update automatically because I prefer to wait & see if other users have problems with updates. No games - just the following, all of which have been on the phone for a couple of years:
K9 Mail
CalenGoo
Swiftkey Keyboard
WiFi Analyzer
AVG Antivirus (which said the phone was clean earlier in the week)
Dropbox
ES File Explorer
New York Times
....plus the usual assortment of pre-installed Google & Verizon crap.
Is there a way to get the phone into safe mode from a cold start? Or, something I can do which involves reloading a new ROM from my computer (Windows 7 Pro)? I'd really rather not ditch this phone at the moment. I don't care if it involves rooting. The warranty is way beyond done, and the phone's already a brick, so experimenting doesn't worry me.
