While I think you are missing the point, I'm baited by the proposition that devops requires paying constant attention to smartphones.

I use "Tasker" on Android to check for my name in the on-call calendar and change notification settings accordingly. Otherwise it's dead silent when at work and very low volume when connected to a wifi.

People want to want to ditch the smartphone. Very few actually want to. Proof: sales in the hundreds of millions.

It sucks when capitalism shows people what they really want because sometimes it pierces people's bubbles of who they think they are and they find out who they actually are.

Having a two way internet pager (being able to read and send email) is good. Almost everything else about smartphones is really not that good but worth tolerating for email.