I just bought one of those cheap HTC Desire 510 phones and took the time to pick, add, and arrange my apps the way that I wanted them. I am also a big fan of downloading Memory Booster and Nova Launcher in order to get rid of bloatware and increase my limited options. BTW, I don't know how to root, and even if I did, I wouldn't root this phone.

Anyway, there I was, with 7 screens (not the stock 3) and 38 of my fav apps (on top of 193 items that Google, HTC and Virgin Mobile put together (40 of which I either removed or disabled). I would load a few apps, then use the memory booster to clean things up.

Then...I started going through the apps list (Settings/Phone/Apps/ALL) to see what I could put onto 16GB add-on memory card. I took care not to save sensitive type apps to the memory card and made certain that the songs were on the card too.

Next, I made sure that all was just like I wanted it, rebooted it, then BAM! Virgin Mobile skins started taking over, then HTC with their blessed Blinkfeed. I don't have anything HTC's junk, but it takes up too much room on this Ram hungry phone. Hence my use of Nova Launcher, etc. Anywaaaay...sorry for the long message, but I really got upset (at VM) for trying to take over my phone.

I really want to know how to prevent this from happening again. I rebooted the phone again, the apps re-appeared, but some of the widgets didn't fit (Nova lets you resize widgets...to my delight). One of my guesses is that moving the Apps to the SD card may have something to do with it, along with disabling some of the HTC apps. All of the resized widgets vanished.

Another thought was that I just activated the phone, over the weekend, and that it might take time for all the bloatware to make it to my phone. Any ideas that you all may have may help.