Problem is that I'm aware of the symptoms, but have no idea what the disease is.
Here's what I can tell you:
- Upon purchasing the phone, I quickly rooted it. Installed Titanium Backup but stupidly did not bother to back the darned thing up.
- Removed a few small items like the Connection Optimizer which were listed as causers of the phone to reboot and that were noted on this forum as safe to remove.
- Phone started randomly rebooting anyway. Often in the middle of an apps use or during a call. Other times even when the phone was not being used.
- Purchased a 16G MicroSD card, installed it, and moved a number of apps over, thinking it might be a question of memory and resources.
- Phone soon went from rebooting to getting stuck in bootloops. At first they were periodic and would eventually kick out of the loop. Eventually got to the point where all it does is the bootloop and never boots into normal mode. Bootloops consistently present the Event screen, then the Virgin Mobile animation and then it stops, the screen slightly dims and then the phone reboots.
- Removing or reinstalling the MicroSD card has no effect on the bootloop. Nor does booting in recovery mode and running the cache wipe or the factory reset.
- Discovered through trial and error that the phone does boot in Safe Mode and it stays up. Never reboots on its own and its never an issue getting it in Safe Mode. Have use of most Google apps but that's about it.
Whatever the problem is is something that grew over a two month period until the phone decided it won't work in normal mode. And it's most likely software based alone, as the phone runs with no issues whatsoever in Safe Mode.
But as I'm only an android novice, that's about all I've got.