Can anything be saved from a dead phone

Assuming you activate the new phone with the same Google account used on the dead one, you might find much or all of what you did on Google services is there. Likely true for other services with cloud aspects to them. That said, it's a serious mistake to learn from, if you didn't take adequate precautions to back up important data or media kept on the old phone. Both online and offline storage are pretty cheap these days, so use them routinely.

By the way, your old phone (depending on cause of ...) may not be dead. If you haven't, it's worth checking to see if a hard reset could restore "out of box" condition:

https://www.androidcentral.com/how-factory-reset-android-phone

Most manufacturers provide help with this.  Especially important is the Recovery Mode button-press sequence that varies by manufacture and model, but can restart an apparently "dead" device. Has restored my "bricked" phones even after dropping and cracking them open with the battery bouncing out, although the accumulated apps, data and settings were all lost..

I2K4 wrote:

That said, it's a serious mistake to learn from, if you didn't take adequate precautions to back up important data or media kept on the old phone.

I have most everything backed up, including some document scans. Few of the photos were taken with the camera. I usually download them from my pbase account or send them to the phone from my computer using bluetooth. I have SMS Backup and Restore, and did a backup of my texts about three weeks ago. The backups are on Google Drive.

Others had the same problem. I tried what was suggested.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MotoG/comments/cj20ei/moto_g_wont_boot_alternating_flashing_led_and/

I get an alternating flashing LED and Motorola logo screen.

When I press the Volume Down key and Power key, I get a Restart Bootolader screen. I can scroll through the menu, but nothing new happens, even when I select the Start option. The phone just will not start, though it says my battery is okay.

I read elsewhere that this can happen if the battery is allowed to die completely and that's what happened. 5-6 seconds in the water certainly didn't help.

I'm not going to play with the old phone any more, at least for a while. My new phone should come tomorrow or Monday. Maybe all my apps will be automatically downloaded to it when I sign into my GMail account.

Many thanks for your input!

If it got wet, all bets are off, but I did have one miraculous recovery of a bricked phone after a dousing, burying it in a bowl of rice for a couple of weeks and then hard-reset via Recovery Mode - in the meantime I'd already bought my replacement phone.  (I keep an old phone for sat/nav in the car, rather than torture the main phone's battery with constant charging.  Old phones are worth a bit of effort for that kind of thing.)

The phone is working!

I kept it plugged in while I watched a movie in another room. When I came back in, the phone was no longer blinking. For the heck of it, I pushed the power button and it came on as normal. I'm using it now to type this.

Not going to try to figure this out. I will use the new one and keep this as a spare. Don't ever want to be without a phone again.

Besides being in the water, I think one of the lessons learned is never let your battery become completely depleted. Never did that before and will never let it happen again.

Oh yes. Back up on a regular basis... yes, even a phone. 😊

Very good.  I've found all smartphones pretty hardy critters.  Glad it worked out for you.

It's taken me two days to figure out my new phone and transfer everything over to it (old phone > Bluetooth to Computer > Bluetooth computer to phone.

Almost all apps that I use were automatically downloaded to my new phone.

A lot of time but I'm happy my old phone came back to life. Hope I never have to do this again.