The “One Screen Challenge”
By 
One of the great things about the iPhone now is that it offers the opportunity to add an additional 148 applications to the device.
While I don’t have quite that many applications, I do have seven different pages of icons sitting on my iPhone and eight on my iPod touch. No, I don’t use all of them. Many of them are applications that I downloaded for review purposes and I just haven’t bothered to remove. The end result, however, is that it has become increasingly difficult for me to find the application I want when I want it. Moreover, considering the large number of applications that are now on my iPhone, organizing them is no easy task.
So it got me thinking — what if I could only have one screen-worth of icons? What if I only had spots for four applications in the dock and an additional 16 applications above it?
What better way to determine which of the applications on the iPhone I actually use!
I spent some time this morning thinking about which applications I would want to have on my iPhone if only 20 spots were available. This is what I decided would earn those spots…
Off the bat, a number of spots will be taken by default.
These include
1. the phone icon – need it to make calls
2. the iPod icon – need to it access music, videos and podcasts
3. the mail icon – need it for email
4. a web icon (either the standard one or Google’s resident app) – need it to access the web and also to access web apps since we only get a total of 20 spots (is that cheating?)
5. the settings icon – duh
6. the calendar icon – double duh
8. the app store icon – tripple duh
Before I even got started with the "One Screen Challenge" I was already down to having 13 spots available. So which additional application icons would be there?
8. the clock icon– I use the clock function as my alarm clock (three different alarms separated by ten minutes each) and as a timer so I can fall asleep to music without the iPod function running all night
9. the camera icon – Although the iPhone’s Camera offers just 2 megapixels and an exceptionally limited feature-set, I find myself using it all the time to capture images
10.Net Newswire – While I still wish NetNewsWire offered access to my clippings, even without that functionality, however, I still find to be the best RSS NwsReader available.
the Byline icon – A few days ago Byline replaced NetNewsWire as my RSS reader of choice. A price drop, access to content offline and access to notes and clippings offline make it one powerful RSS reader!
11. the mapping icon – I LOVE the GPS functionality on the iPhone 3G and cannot imagine living without it now
12. the Jott or reQall – The ability to take voice notes of up to 30 seconds, have them transcribed and sent back to me in minutes in INVALUABLE (I am currently back to using Jott thanks to its simplicity)
13. the ABContacts icon– ABContacts replaces the stock Contacts app because it adds search functionality sorely lacking in the stock app. In addition, the fact that I can double tap a name and pull up phone numbers and email addresses super fast is great
14. the Toodledo icon – (despite what I wrote previously about it not having “clickable” phone numbers and email addresses, it is winning me over over Appigo’s ToDo plus Notebook
15. the WriteRoom icon – A simple but effective app for writing text while holding the iPhone in landscape. I use it all the time.
16. the Evernote icon – A great app for taking notes using text, images, voice and more. Sadly, Evernote still does not store data locally.
17. the eReader icon – eBooks!!!
18. the Twittelator Pro – Lets me keep in touch with friends with ease
19. the Pandora icon – I love Pandora. Period. End of story.
20. the BeejiveIM icon – (We are working on a review of Beejive) This is, by far, THE best IM app for the iPhone!
There are a lot of other apps I like to keep on my iPhone but if I could only have one screen worth, these would be the ones I would choose.
Which would you choose for your one screen of apps?
