Task Bar Apps

Once I had a few days use of the phone and started to figure out which applications I would likely be making heavy use of, I wanted to change the listing in the task bar to reflect that. The picture to the right shows the default arrangement: phone, contacts, e-mail, calendar and launcher.

Mostly, I wanted to ditch the contacts icon. With universal search (which is great), I had, and continue to have, found no big utility in launching the contact application, much less having it placed in such a prominent real estate. I understand it being there by default though, as it is one of the first things people with a new phone play around with.

I figured out pretty quickly how you can move icons around by tapping and holding your finger on them for a second until they acquired a small halo of rings, signifying that you could then drag them around the screen to drop where you pleased. However, I could not figure out how to rearrange those bottom five icons.

My problem, as it turned out after I figured out the solution, was that you are not allowed to simply drag an application onto the task bar, what seemed to me to be the obvious implementation, without first moving one of the apps existing in that space somewhere else to open up a space. Once I dragged the contacts icon off the task bar, I could then drag any other icon into its place.

It really seems like you should be able to drag new icons into the task bar and simply have them displace the right-most icon, which would then fall to some predetermined place like the top of the first Launcher card. Obviously, this is by no means a huge complaint, but it is something that took a little bit too long to figure out and could have been more streamlined.