A ring tone is the sound made by
a telephone to indicate an incoming call. The term,
however, is most often used to refer to the customisable
sounds available on mobile phones. This facility
was originally provided so that people would be
able to determine when their phone was ringing when
in the company of other mobile phone owners.
A phone only rings when a special "ringing
signal" is sent to it. For regular telephones,
the ringing signal is a 90-volt 20-hertz AC wave
generated by the switch to which the telephone is
connected. For mobile phones, the ringing signal
is a specific radio-frequency signal.
Features
Whereas older telephones simply used a pair of bells
for the ringer, modern ringtones have become extremely
diverse, leading to phone personalization and customization.
Newer mobile phones allow the users to associate
different ringtones for different phonebook entries.
Many also allow users to create their own music
tones, either with a "melody composer"
or a sample/loop arranger (such as the MusicDJ in
many Sony Ericsson phones). Often these are native
formats only available to one particular phone model
or brand. However, other formats, such as MIDI or
MP3, are often suported; must be downloaded to the
phone before they can be used as a normal ringtone.
Commercial ringtones take advantage of this functionality,
which has led to the success of the mobile music
industry.
An alternative to a ring tone for
mobile phones is a vibrating alert. It may be useful;
-in noisy environments
-in places where ring tone noise would be disturbing
-for the hearing impaired
Criticism
Ring tone advertising campaigns have become hugely
popular, though they have also attracted a great
deal of criticism. For example, in May 2005 Jamster!
bought 73,716 spots across all TV channels for the
Crazy Frog advertisements, which were shown so often
that many came to find Crazy Frog very irritating.
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