The thing with the Devour is it uses a MotoBlur synced home screen. The MotoBlur service stores all your contacts and your home screen configuration so it can be recovered easily at any time. However, if your service provider doesn't handle MotoBlur then you have to bypass it with ##bluroff.
Unfortunately, by using ##bluroff you are effectively bypassing contact loading every boot. I'm no expert, but if at all possible, try installing up a custom home screen/app and see if that will remember your contacts.
As for it forgetting your apps, I don't understand why it's doing that, applications are supposedly stored and run from /system/app, which is a local folder on the phone. From my own experimenting, MotoBlur also seems to keep track of what apps were installed using the Package Installer. If worst comes to worst, you may have to install every app you have through adb on your computer, but there's no guarantee even that will work.
EDIT: No, I was wrong, local installed apps are stored in /data/app with their saved data in /data/data I believe. I had to do a "factory reset" on my Devour lately, and the /data folder was emptied, but not everything was reset. I only had to do one step of the 23-step rooting process to reroot it, and all the bloatware was still gone. Turns out the factory reset didn't reset the /system/app folder. This may be a way to keep your apps between sessions, but it requires root and it won't remember any of your settings, and games won't save between sessions unless you save to the SD card.
