Switching to a new phone is easy enough these days. The wheezing older model formed a huddle with the shiny oversized new thing, and within a few minutes had effected a near-complete digital handover. One exception was the notification settings. As they reset to the default, my new phone began to beep and buzz incessantly, like the strange offspring of R2-D2 and a cheap vibrator.
A photo app started trying to sell me a print album. A train ticket app prodded me not to forget my upcoming journeys. The Financial Times app urged me to read the latest headlines. More disturbing, Google News installed itself and did the same thing, except for news sources I don’t follow and don’t want to. Most absurd of all, every single incoming email announced itself with a beep and a teasing extract on my home screen. Fortunately, I don’t have social media on my smartphone; I could only imagine the cacophony if I did.
This was all simple enough to fix. Calendar, text messages and phone calls are now the only apps allowed to interrupt me. Still, it was annoying. I wondered: surely everyone switches off most notifications, right? Right?