hey there everyone
i had the same issue with my htc Desire HD after the OTA update to Android 2.3.5 and HTC Sense 3.0 - phone reboots over and over again ... after somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes the white screen with the green htc logo appears and the phone reboots again - making my phone unusable :-(
i have solved my issues without a factory reset and without wiping my sdcard (i didn't want to lose any data)
i am not suggesting that my solutions will work for everyone else (or anyone else
but it may be worth investing some time trying them before losing data with a factory reset or wiping your sd-card.
my solutions:
1) when the phone reboots remove the battery, wait a moment and then
remove the SD card. replace the battery and turn the phone on.
hopefully the phone will boot normally (but without the sdcard) the apps on the sdcard (and those that use the sdcard for storage) won't be available/usable but at least the phone has stopped rebooting so you have the opportunity to change the configurations and/or installations.
2) once the phone (without sdcard) has booted open Google Play (or Market) and look through your installed applications.
Some application on the phone is incompatible with the update and the removal of the sdcard has stopped this application (or applications) from running to the point where it/they crash the phone.
Slow method: remove applications one-by-one to establish which app is causing the problems - but this is going to take days (after each uninstall the phone needs to be turned off, the sdcard inserted and turned on - for each uninstall which doesn't solve the problem the repeated rebooting starts again and then we must remove the battery, the sdcard and reboot the phone)
Quicker method:
remove 10-15 applications then replace the sdcard and boot the phone to see if that helped, if not then remove battery and sdcard and then restart and remove another 10-15 applications ... should solve the issue within 3 - 4 restarts (i.e. about half an hour).
But which applications should you target first ?
I think the clue is in the fact that (at least with my phone) the crash/reboot didn't occur during the boot but after the boot was finished.
The only applications which could cause such a crash are those that start (or are started) automatically after the phone boot is finished. So any of the apps that you typically see in the Running applications list.
The second clue is that plenty of applications work fine with the new update - which suggests that the problem application(s) are unlikely to be simple content-based apps interacting with android using high-level apis but are more likely to be doing something clever and complicated with low-level apis (so system tools and graphics-focused apps (games/maps etc) )
So in a first pass, start by uninstalling everything and everything that is interacting with your system (battery life extension apps, system management apps, startup management apps, software installation/uninstall apps, software management apps (other than google play/android market) etc).
this may solve your problems
if not then in a second pass try uninstalling all your games and maps (including Google Maps) - you could also uninstall Google Earth but it wasn't causing any issues for me.
eventually you should be able to boot your phone normally (with the sdcard inserted)
so far so good, now there still is the issue of whatever is on your sdcard which was crashing the phone (it's still there unfortunately) so now open up google play again and continue uninstalling anything you don't want/need and certainly any system management apps - there are suddenly lots more applications in Google Play to uninstall (the ones on the sdcard only show up when the sdcard is inserted).
Hopefully your phone will then boot normally
it worked for me...
3) even after i returned my phone to normality, occasionally it still reboots repeatedly - but this is only when i switch on/reboot my phone
whilst it is charging.
this is now my only remaining issue (but if my battery is completely flat my workaround is to charge for 5 minutes,
remove from the charger, boot, wait until the boot is completed and then plug in the charger again).
i hope this may be of some help
