Everything You Need To Know (Plus What You Don't) About Ringtones

If you've browsed the internet at all, you've likely seen many advertisements for ringtones. Some of them are free, some are not. Of course, they are ringtones for your mobile phone. Other phones just use plain ringtones, and are usually not customizable.

Mobile phone manufacturers originally designed mobile phones with customizable ringtones so that you could easily tell if if it was your phone ringing when you're with a group of people. Things change though, and mobile phone ringtones are now much more than a convenience ? they are an art form, even a fashion statement (?I'm cooler than you 'cause my ringtone is cooler than yours...?).

Mobile phone ringtones come in three basic varieties:

Monotone: Most monotone ringtones are something akin to your plain old ring that you might find on a touch tone phone. Or perhaps they are a beep, beep, beep. Either way, these are your Plain Jane ring tones.

Polyphonic: These ringtones use multiple tones to create melodies. Polyphonic, of course, just means ?many sounds?. Polyphonic ringtones are usually MIDI files. MIDI files are not actual audio files. Instead a MIDI file is a set of instructions that tell the player (in this case your phone) what instrument sounds to play and when. Polyphonic ringtones are a great upgrade on standard ringtones, but they still don't really sound like a real audio recording.

MP3: These are the Rolls-Royce of ringtones. They are actual MP3 audio files of the original recording. You can usually purchase and download to your phone MP3 ringtones of your favorite songs for a couple dollars each. They will sound nearly identical to the original recording, just lower quality. The recordings are also often edited to make them suitable for use as a ringtone.

Customized ringtones can provide you a lot of fun with your phone ? you can make your phone ?you? with ringtones.

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