slide to unlock is fine. Its a way to make sure the device isnt accidentally turned on and wasting battery or worse messing with or deleting stuff without you noticing.
I think if the lock screen is to much work for you, you're just being lazy.
I hate this attitude that people take. It's OUR phone. I don't need someone to wipe my ass for me, feed me, or bathe me either. I certainly don't need someone to manage my lock screen or battery usage for me. I have a Droid X which thankfully removes this god awful feature if you so desire within the settings, and I haven't ONCE accidentally turned on my phone, butt dialed, or deleted stuff. Simply hit the lock button to lock and hit it again to unlock, no god awful sliding.
What is fine for you isn't necessarily fine for other people. As you can see with the Droid X, it's certainly not that difficult of a feature to add, to be able to turn it on or off, so people can do what they want with THEIR phone.
This kind of attitude is what ticks me off about my car...GM tells me when and when I cannot lock or unlock my doors. There is absolutely no setting on the Camaro to keep the doors unlocked, they automatically lock when you start to drive which is annoying if you are stopping to pick someone up, stop at the mailbox, etc. It's my car that I paid 34k dollars for, there is no reason I shouldn't be able to tell it to keep the doors unlocked at all times should I decide that's what I want.
Furthermore, the phones won't work unless they have some sort of capacitive touch, so 99% chance they aren't going to delete anything while in your pocket unless you have your hands or some capacitive thing like a stylus in there anyhow. Certainly not enough to hold an icon in, wiggle it, then delete it and confirm deletion. Sometimes in a hurry or something that slide might be annoying. And if someone finds it annoying, that's their business.
