In: Music
27 Jul 2009Cell phones have revolutionized the way people communicate. Within 20 years cell phones have moved from luxury devices to devices of necessity. Cell phone ringtones are one of the most popular accessories used in cell phones. The annual sales of cell phone ringtones reach approximately $3 billion.
Ringtones have changed the soundscape of modern communication. A ringtone is the sound made by a cell phone to indicate an incoming call. The cell phone makes the ringing sound in response to a special ringing radio frequency sent by the cellular service to indicate incoming calls. They were initially provided in cell phones so that the user could differentiate between its own cell phone rings from other cell phones'. However cell phone ringtones have become even more diversified leading to personalization of cell phones.
Presently many ringtones such as sing tones, voice tones, caller tunes, monophonic tones, polyphonic tones, true tones etc are available freely and on payment basis on the internet. From Britney Spears to Shakira, crying babies to diving fighter planes, all sorts of ringtones are available. Cell phone ringtones started out as simple rings and beeps, but present day ringtones are generally polyphonic. Polyphonic ringtones use two or more independent melodies playing synchronously. Current cellular phones can play four to forty tones and notes simultaneously. Polyphonic ringtones have literally silenced monophonic tones due to their superior and pleasant quality. They can play guitars, drums, pianos and other sound instruments.
Cell phones are available with preinstalled tones. If the user is not satisfied with them he can download ringtones from the internet or from other phones. The usual formats for ringtones are either MP3 or MIDI.
The latest cell phones can store quite a lot of ringtones. There are facilities available for storing different ringtones set for different people on the phone book. In addition, different ringtones for SMS (short messaging system), MMS (Multimedia messaging system) and voice calls can also be kept. Voice ringtones are a fad these days. Ringtone downloads of voices of famous people, movie stars and other popular voices like that of the Star Wars characters Yoda, Chewbacca, R2D2 etc are available. Yoda is particularly popular with the phrase Answer the phone you must.
Vibrational ringtones are used in noisy places, while traveling, by hearing impaired, places where silence is mandatory like movie theaters libraries, hospitals, meetings etc. With vibra ringtones the cell phone vibrates to get the attention of the user.
Cell phones have moved from being simple communication devices to a kind of adornment and fashion statement. Ringtones help make the cell phone appear more lively and attractive and thus reflect on the personality of the user. By Susan Jan
In: Music
26 Jul 2009There is a whole hysteria caused by polyphonic ringtones out there so there is no way you haven’t heard about them by now. They are now in fashion because the technology that produces them is very advanced and because, together with mobile wallpapers and other types of cell phone accessories, they make life fun and attractive.
Polyphonic ringtones, as the name says, mean different sounds and tones, as opposite to monophonic ring tones. Ring tones are sounds made by your phone, usually your mobile phone, in order to indicate an incoming call. A polyphonic ringtone has as an advantage the fact that multiple notes can be played at the same time using different instrument sounds such as drums, guitar, etc. The ring tones business has developed together with mobile phones, and now120 individual notes can be heard with various instruments played simultaneously to give a more realistic sound.
So, why are polyphonic ringtones so important to us? Well, from the very first ring tone, people have had the desire to step out of the crowd and to have their own specific print on their accessories. If you come to think about it, it’s only natural that every one wants to have personalized ring tones, sounds with which to associate his/her personality. And that’s exactly the reason why polyphonic ringtones are so appreciated nowadays. They offer just that – distinction and variety.
Imagine yourself at the office, together with plenty of colleagues owning cell phones with the same ring tones as yours. When one of the phones rings it would be ridiculous not to be able to differentiate your own. But, thanks to polyphonic ringtones, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. You’ll be able to recognize your phone from thousands. Another advantage of polyphonic ringtones is the fact that you can have different ring tones for every member of your family, for friends or other important contacts. This gives you the possibility to know who’s calling before looking at your phone’s screen. Last but not least, polyphonic ringtones are easier to hear in a noisy crowd so you don’t have to check your phone every 10 minutes and to be sure you haven’t missed any important call.
Besides polyphonic ringtones, there are also other ways to make your cell phone different from the rest – through mobile wallpapers. Mobile wallpapers are images of different types (saved with different extensions) which can be placed on the screen of your cell phone. These mobile wallpapers are also a good way to step out of the crowd and show personality.
However many instruments there are at the user’s disposition, making your cell phone resemble your personality isn’t so easy. Choosing polyphonic ringtones that might bother those around you is a problem. Imagine talking to your boss when the phone rings. Your loud inappropriate ring tones might bother a serious and conservatory person. Fortunately you have a wide range of options. One of the most popular choices of polyphonic ringtones is music, but it’s not the only one. Polyphonic ringtones can also be a speaker’s voice in the background. Another choice would be to compose your own polyphonic ringtones. This is a good idea only if you’re good at it and couldn’t find the right polyphonic ringtones for you. If you decide to compose your own polyphonic ringtones you have to know that you’ll need the right equipment to do it. You can record your ring tones with the help of the computer or other devices and then download them into your phone.
So, now that you know how to adapt your phone to your personality, let’s see how and where one can get polyphonic ringtones. Contrary to many people’s opinion, polyphonic ring tones aren’t expensive. You can actually find a lot of websites which offer free polyphonic ringtones and in a wide range of choices, too. However, the latest and funniest polyphonic ringtones it will cost you some money. The price of a polyphonic ringtone starts from two dollars and is usually twenty-five seconds long. People all over the world have made a real habit in buying ring tones for their mobiles, regardless of their cost. This habit has made ring tones sellers to become popular and rich.
Besides the fact that polyphonic ringtones keep you and your cell phone in fashion, they can also be a very good and original gift for the dear ones. Since many people nowadays use polyphonic ringtones such a gift can be a pleasant surprise for friends and family. Ring tones, together with mobile wallpapers, can be a good and funny way to say ‘Happy birthday’, ‘I love you’, etc. — Amelie Gam
In: Music
24 Jul 2009Ringtones are musical sounds that a mobile phone or cell phone plays when an incoming call or text message is received to the handset. Because the popularity and technology advantage of mobile phones over basic landline telephones, ringtones can be downloaded to a handset and used to personalize a callers ringing tone. The fact that users can choose what ringtone there mobile phone rings too, is the biggest selling point and the main purpose of ringtones popularity.
There are various different formats of ringtone, and each format of ringtone is more suited to a range of different manufacturers and models of mobile phone. Many people who purchase a mobile phone think that they can receive any type of ringtone; this is not the case in many situations.
At the moment, there are currently 5 different formats of ringtone available:
RTTTL, which is short for Ring Tones Text Transfer Language, is a simple text based format that you can use to make/create ringtones that can be uploaded or transferred onto your mobile phone via various mobile phone uploading techniques e.g. Infrared, SMS, and Bluetooth.
Monophonic ringtones are very basic ringtones, most commonly found on older mobile phones such as the Nokia 3210. Monophonic ringtones are only capable of making one sound at a time; hence monophonic. Each tone or sound is created at a different frequency creating a melodic, but simple sound. RTTTL is the basis behind monophonic ringtones.
Polyphonic Ringtones are compatible on mobile phones that can produce the playing of up to 16 separate tones simultaneously. Polyphonic ringtones are slightly more musical than monophonic ringtones, but there is still no real comparison to a real life song. Most modern mobile phones support polyphonic ringtones.
MP3 ringtones also know as real tones, real music tones and true tones are ringtones that are complete emulations of CD quality music. As the name suggest, MP3 ringtones are just MP3 music files that are assigned as ringtones. This allows the user to have perfectly quality sounds coming from there mobile phone, which for the first time has allowed mobile phones to produce real life sounds such as signing and voices. Many people now download full track albums to there mobile phone and simply use the files for recreation, such as using the mobile phone as an MP3 Player, then assign the MP3 file as a ringtone. This has seen a big surge in ringtone sales as it allows consumers to kill two birds with one stone.
With today's technology increasing and the market for mobile phone content rapidly expanding, we have seen the creation of video ringtones. Video ringtones are simply small video clips with a MP3 file assigned to play in the background, so when you receive an incoming call to your mobile phone, the video and ringtone is played. Although video ringtones have been around for a while now, they have never really become main stream and could be a new market for many mobile ringtone websites.
The author of this article is Michael Thomson, the Marketing Director of Schnozberry, an online source for downloading ringtones and various other mobile phone content.
In: Music
23 Jun 2009Throughout their recent history, mobile ringtones have been an important part of mobile phone industry and affected users from all over the world by means of new styles generated in the meantime. Having an efficient history, mobile ringtones seem to have a bright future in the following few years. How rational is this idea? We are going to try to answer this question by examining the causes of the success of mobile ringtones in the past and reach a conclusion following the same mechanism.
With the advent of polyphonic mobile ringtones, also known as new generation ringtones, people aimed by such recreational advances have been more and more interested in such features. An important outcome of this interest was the increasing popularity of polyphonic mobile ringtones, which brought about some differences in composition of the sequence of the music produced and new styles in the toning standards. Mobile phone manufacturers began to take care of user interest and produced more user friendly phones, which resulted in a larger community for mobile phone users.
The came the ear of polyphonic mobile ringtones in which monophonic ringtones were abandoned for the sake of the new technology aimed at young users. Monophonic ringtones started to be observed as those to go into trash, so polyphonic mobile ringtones gained remarkable amount of popularity. Mobile phone manufacturers, too, drifted their way to aim at user interest and produce more advanced stuff for new generation mobile phone users.
With the above analysis, we now have a solid background on which we can establish a projection for the future of mobile ringtones. It is also noteworthy that we must speak about the future of polyphonic mobile ringtones here since monophonic ringtones are considered only as a peripheral which would help the former in the entire industry. Still, we have to utter the historical importance of the former and the way in which they were converted into polyphonic ringtones. Had we not experienced the above fact, there would be different outcomes of monophonic mobile ringtones. Furthermore, they would remain intact as the time passed by, and we would not seek for an alternative for them in the meantime.
Considering the optimizations in polyphonic mobile ringtones, we should note that mobile phones will not ever have a day without such accessories, which brought about a new awareness level for mobile phones in the past and seem to continue this effect in the future. The main reason for this is of course the physical restrictions mobile phone standard serves us, namely there is no alternative to mobile ringtones so that they can replace the current items in the future. Mobile phones are designed to be used in conjunction with mobile ringtones, and there seems no way to eliminate these little helpers from the largest community that has ever been established among billions of people around the world.
In: Music
23 Jun 2009When real music ringtones started to become available, one of the nicest benefits was that people could enjoy really great sound quality and could utilize just about any file format of music. For those who are die-hard music lovers, as well as for people who just enjoy a better quality of sound, the improvements in technology have been welcomed, as have the many free US cellular ringtones from which people can now choose.
The cool thing about the huge selection of cellular ringtones these days is that a great many of the websites are offering free cell ringtones. That's right! Completely free mobile ringtones with no strings attached. The companies that offer these free downloadable ringtones are usually covered with all kinds of advertising on their websites and they hope that you will click on their ads so that they can make some money from your visit.
However, clicking on the ads on these sites is not mandatory and the cellular phone ringtone variety to choose from on some of these sites is really amazing. Some people get so excited about the many free US cellular ringtones that they can choose from that they spend hours and hours listening to samples and downloading more free cell ringtones than they can probably even fit on their phone.
On these sites that offer the free cell ringtones, you will be able to choose from an enormous offering of real music ringtones that cover many genres, such as rock, pop, rap, and jazz. There are even Christian ringtones with inspirational music, or you could download a ring tone of a stand up comedian telling jokes. Once you choose the ring tone you want, download it to your computer or to your cellphone and then use it for your personal ringtone.
You can also use these free ringtones to help you identify who is calling you. Many people don't even realize they have this function on their cell phone. Almost all of the newer cell phones allow you to program the phone book that is in your phone so that when a specific person calls, as long as it is from a number that is listed in your phone book, the caller ringtone that you have assigned to that person will be activated.
A lot of people have a great deal of fun assigning funny caller ringtones to the phone book listing of different friends or family members. The best thing about using this feature is that you will know exactly who is calling you even if you don't look at your phone. Downloading lots of free ringtones to your cell will give you plenty of choices and will let you give everyone in your phone book their own distinctive cellular phone ringtone.
There are some websites that advertise that they have free US cellular ringtones for you to download, but in reality they make you pay for credits or points. Sometimes they will give you a few points just for filling out their form with your email address. Usually that will give you one or two free downloadable ringtones, but if you want more than that you will have to buy additional credits.
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