The WM splash screen locked up on me as well while on the original Helmi version... in fact, that is why I came back to the boards today.
Hope this info helps you debug...
Was using Helmi's version for about 2 weeks pretty smoothly with the same typical little hiccups as found elsewhere on the boards. Only additional app installed was Warring Nations demo. Had about 80% battery power. I was playing Pocket Suduko on Very Hard and while generating a new grid and it seemed to have hard locked the whole phone (waited about 15 minutes). Did a soft reset (with stylus) and the phone would never get past the splash screen. Tried removing battery pack, soft resets, etc. I did notice though that just letting the phone sit there, the screen would go black like a normal sleep state and the screen would come back on when I hit the power button. Since I am in a bad cell area, the Verizon service is continuously connecting and disconnecting and it would still give me the audible notification of those connects/disconnects. So that tells me it had to be running somewhat properly in the background, it just wouldn't close the splash screen. Unfortunately I didn't think of trying to call the phone until after I did a hard reset.
I will download devel2 now and let you know if it happens again.
Thanks for all the hard work!
Geoff