Ringtones Can you ring my bell
Created on 2008-04-10 05:31:41
There is a new game being played in movie theaters across the nation, counting how many different ringtones you can hear from people’s cell phones during a film. Yesm it is annoying, but also interesting to see the soccer mom with the Metallica ringtone and the goth kid’s cell warbling to Dolly Parton.
Cell phone ringtones are now a part of everyday life despite being around since 1998. The first ringtone was a monophonic tone that was developed in Finland. The ringtones were basic and sometimes incomprehensible, but the idea was infectious and spread rapidly in Europe and Asia.
The monophonic ringtone was soon replaced by cell phones with polyphonic ringtones. This advance in technology allowed different tones to be played at the same time and ringtones of recognizable tunes became commonplace. Today, cell phones allow truetone ringtones which can be snippets of songs or tunes, so everyone could have their own unique ringtone for their phone, at a price.
Ringtones can be purchased from the cell phone networks, such as Verizon and AT&T, or from independent ringtone sites on the internet. The choice of ringtones will depend on your network and cell phone. The ringtone can be downloaded to your computer and then uploaded to your phone, or can be sent directly to your phone using the messaging system SMS, which is the acronym for Short Message Service.
The ringtone industry has grown quickly and it is now a multi-billion dollar venture. There are thousands of ringtone sites on the internet and the choice of ringtones grows with every passing day. There is really no excuse to use the default ringtone supplied with your cell phone. With recent figures showing that more than half the world’s population owning a cell phone, it is almost necessary to have a unique ringtone. There is nothing more irritating than answering your phone and then finding out that it was someone else’s phone with the same ringtone.
The rise of the ringtone has also meant profit for the recording industry as they have been able to obtain royalties from the snippets of songs downloaded as ringtones. This will only increase as the newer phones allow different ringtones to be associated with different incoming callers, so users will be downloading even more ringtones.
Personalization of your cell phone is almost essential, and the ringtone is most popular means of phone customization. Buying a ringtone is cheap and easy. Choosing a ringtone may be much more difficult.
