Why do app icons get removed from the main screen when I reboot my phone?

[AC Question]

My phone doesn't have much memory, so I most games and some apps (like instagram) I saved on my SD card, and when I reboot my phone the icons for those apps get removed from the main screen (I have to acess the menu and drag them all back to my main screen(s)).

Is there any fix for this or is this intended?

 

[htczed]

It's possible that your phone only stores the data of the icons only for a temporary time so it can save memory because it does not have much memory as you said.
The best way I would go about this is, first reset your phone to factory default settings with clearing all the personal data including apps, photos and such.
Then when you set the phone up again just don't install any apps on the phone storage but instead make it so it's installed by default on your SD card, this way your phone storage will be less affected and will have more room to "breathe" so to say.
Try clearing your cache data as often as possible as well.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone do you have?

 

[Rukbat]

1. If the app is on the SD card and gets removed (it shouldn't if the phone is working properly), the shortcut on the desktop has no way to get the icon for the shortcut, so it shows the Android icon. (It gets the app's own icon from the app file.)

2. If you somehow installed the entire app to the SD card, the symlink to it disappeared when you rebooted (I assume that you're using the word correctly - turn the phone off, then turn it on). Since there's no mechanism in Android for actually installing an app to the SD card (you can move small pieces to the card, you can't install an app to it), that wouldn't be surprising.

3. If it happens regularly, I'd suspect a corrupt OS. Back everything up (see Backing up an Android Device), then reflash the stock ROM and restore everything.

 

[B. Diddy]

Also, is the phone rooted? If so, were the apps moved to SD using the native system feature, or using an app like Link2SD?