Android Notifications Have Room for Improvement

Since 1.0, Android has gotten high marks for its notifications bar. It was often the one thing even hardcore iPhone partisans might acknowledge as superior. I like it, but I'm not completely convinced it is so great. My biggest complaint is notification-bar clutter. More and more apps seem to want to take up space there--often to simply tell you they are actively running. The better ones allow you to turn this off as a Setting, but that is tedious, too.[1]

In this case, I don't have an immediate, strong recommendation how to fix the problem, but I am pretty sure it is fixable, if given enough attention.
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[1] Similar to the ridiculous clutter of the Windows tray icon bar, except with less real estate to work with.