Mobile Phones: Introduction to Ringtones

A ringtone or ring tone is simply defiend as 'the sound made by a telephone to indicate and incoming call'. These days, however, the term is most commonly applied to the ringing sounds made by mobile phones.

As mobile phones have grown ever more complex and the software driving them gained more capabilities mobile phones began to be loaded with a number of ringtones from which the user could chose their favourite. This functionlity effectively develped along with the increased popularity of mobile phones and allowed users to chose their own ringtones so that a phone could be identified even when there were multiple mobile phones in a room.

The latest generation of mobile phones allow different ringtones to be associated with differrent functions so that an incoming call has one ringtone, a text message has another, a voicemail message has another etc.

Ringtone Generation

Taking advantage of these features, a new Ringtone Maker trend has emerged. For example, websites like Phone Sherpa and RingtoneSoup let users make ringtones from the music they already own (MP3, CD etc.) and upload directly to their mobile phone with no limit on the number of songs uploaded. In addition to the cost benefits, a key feature is the music editor that lets the user easily pick the part of the song they wish to set as a ringtone. Such services automatically detect the phone settings to ensure the best file type and format. There are however providers who have already edited and trimmed the song for you.

Polyphonic Ringtones

The latest generation of ringtones are polyphonic (ie it can produce multiple notes at the same time). Initially these polyphonic ringtones were generated by sequenced recording methodologies, such as MIDI. These types of recordings specify which kind of instrument play each note, but the type and quality of playback is dependent on the playback device itself. The latest generation of polyphonic ringtones use digital audio recordings. These types of ringtones can be music, speech, sound or any combination of these. Such digital audio polyphonic ringtones are sometimes referred to as 'realtones' or 'truetones'. As a result ringtones that are excerpts from pop songs have become extremely popular and a large market in these types of ringtones has emerged.

One remaining problem with ringtones is that many mobile phone manufacturers have their own ringtone specification so the correct ringtone type has to be uploaded dependent on the phone's type and manufacturer.

Indeed, the following ringtone types all exist today:

  • eMelody — Older Ericsson format.
  • iMelody — Most new phones that don't do Nokia's Smart Messaging are using this format.
  • kws — Kyocera's ringer format.
  • mid / midi — Popular sound format.
  • morse code — Text files with a .morse extension get converted into morse code songs
  • mot — An older ringer format for Motorola phones.
  • MP3 — Some phones support ringtones that are mp3 format.
  • nokia / sckl / ott — Nokia Smart Messaging format. Nokia phones can receive ringtones as a text message. Ringtone tools can create these text messages. This allows anyone with a compatible phone to load their own ringtones in without a datacable. There are other phones besides Nokia that use this.
  • pdb — Palm database. This is the format used to load ringtones on PDA phones such as the Kyocera 6035 and the Handspring Treo
  • rtttl — A popular text format for ringtones.
  • rtx — Similar to rtttl with some advanced features. Also the octaves are different on rtx.
  • samsung1 & samsung2 — Samsung keypress format.
  • siemens keypress — Can create and read in a Siemens text file format.
  • •siemens SEO — Siemens SEO binary format.

However, as you will see in the next part of this article most mobile manufacturers now use SMS for ringtone recognition so that ringtones can be transmitted directly to the phone over the airwaves via an SMS message.