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Ringtones ClearlyExplained.Com

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What is a ringtone? Almost everyone in the western industrialised world has heard a ringtone. The term today applies almost exclusively to those sometimes irritating but always informative sounds that mobile phones ( cell phones ) make. The main reason for the differences in ringtones is so that people can recognise their own phones ringing when others may have theirs ringing.

It is only with the advent of computers in mobile phones that ringtones have become as sophisiticated. A ringtone can also be considered the sounds that you hear when you are on the phone waiting for the other person to pick up.

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Why are ringtones important?   Well the obvious reason for a ringtone is to alert the phone owner that they have an incoming call that should be attended to. It could be argued that ringtones are not important at all and just cause a public nuisance. Ringtones and the workplace Australia's channel 9 Today Program reported that some Australian workplaces have instituted fines for ringtones that sound during meetings.

can ringtones give an indication of an owners personality? It is certainly possible, as it gives an indication to people's personal tastes and quirkiness. Having a loud and annoying ringtone may indicate a need to be acknowledge. Ringtones and the economy Ringtones are probably of great significance to the economy as a major source of income to companies selling these tones. Also music companies get royalties for selling tunes to ringtone companies. Try calculating the number of mobile phones. In a typical year Nokia seems to sell around 160 million phones. world wide it is estimated at around 250 million. Just multiply this figure by $2 or even $3 and you get a few hundred million dollars per year just on a ringtone market. Reference

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News about Ringtones. The main source of news about ringtones is what the latest deal or song conversion is for a ringtone. Google News search for ringtones

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How does a ringtone work? A ringtone relies on the computing power of the mobile phone. The common ringtone is actually programmed through a language called Ringing Tone Text Transfer Language (RTTTL) format, developed by Nokia. You can see an example here Different mobile phones use different systems for encoding ringtones on their devices but most are delivered directly to your phone as part of an SMS system. mobile-entertainment-guide provides quite a good guide to the different types of phones.

Types of ringtones There are now three main types of ringtones: monophonic ( the standard and first type) polyphonic ringtones TrueTone   The main difference is that monophonic just means that only one tone or sound can be played at a time. Polyphonic means several notes can be played at once. Some mobile phones you can set the ringtone to be different depending on the incoming caller. This seems to be useful to dodge nuisance callers.

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What is the history of ringtones? Ringtones have really only been around in their current form since the mobile phone. So ringtones are really about the history of mobile phones. Ringtones used to be important to operators in the very early days of telephone exchanges. The very first telephones required the telelphone caller to "Ring Off" . Reference: Atlanta Telephone History

Some of the first ringtones were downloaded in 1997 through a system called Smart Messaging developed by Nokia.

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The Future of ringtones? Ringtones are likely to to continue as a major component of mobile phone technology for quite some time. The actual ringtone may eventually be replaced by just standard music. It is feasible that any sound file could be used as a ringtone.

Could there be any dangers associated with ringtones? probably not directly although it is possible that certain combinations of pitches and tones could be mentally very irritating. Mobile phone or cell phone rage comes to mind as a possible future concern. A potentially useful idea might be to have a standard system for allowing mobile phone ringtones to be blocked in senstive places, such as cinemas or conert halls.

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