A new patent application filed by Apple shows an "At a Glance" screen that may be added to the iPhone in the future. This would let users move from any notification that is displayed on the screen to the actual notification with a single touch.

As of this moment, you cannot do this on the iPhone. Rather, you will receive a notification and then be prompted to unlock the phone. Doing so will then cause the notifications to disappear. Kind of a bummer, especially if you're in a rush.

However, the addition of a more traditional notification screen will be especially useful once 3rd party applications are allowed to push notifications as well. It is hard to say when such a feature would be incorporated, but since the developer version of "push" was pulled, we may have to wait a while for 3rd party push.  

[via MacRumors]