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Samsung unlocks dock of Galaxy S5

Australian owners of the Samsung Galaxy S5 can now unlock the dock of their Android handset thanks to a new update.

Lexy Savvides Principal Video Producer
Lexy is an on-air presenter and award-winning producer who covers consumer tech, including the latest smartphones, wearables and emerging trends like assistive robotics. She's won two Gold Telly Awards for her video series Beta Test. Prior to her career at CNET, she was a magazine editor, radio announcer and DJ. Lexy is based in San Francisco.
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Josh Miller/CNET

Samsung has finally given Australian Galaxy S5 owners the option of unlocking the dock of their Android handsets.

The dock is a series of icons at the bottom of the home screen providing quick access to frequently used applications and functions. For most users around the world, this dock can be customised by holding and dragging in and out apps to your liking.

Until now, Australian users have been left out in the cold. Samsung locked the dock so these apps could not be swapped out.

Previously, the only way to customise the dock of an Australian-bought S5 was to install a custom ROM or a launcher such as Nova. The locked dock issue was not exclusive to the S5 -- other Samsung handsets and tablets running TouchWiz such as the S4 were also affected.

The software update has started to roll out now over the air. If your handset does not automatically check for it, you can prompt the update through the settings menu.

Once the update has installed, simply tap the pencil icon near the dock to bring up the edit menu. You can then tap and hold the existing dock icons to remove them, then drag in new apps to replace them.