| Product: |
phoneringsong.com |
| Date: |
03/11/02 (2649 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: the ring tones are free, reasonably good selection, good quality
Disadvantages: not the prettiest looking site, free tones only for Nokia users, you have to pay for logos and screensavers
Along with the ever-increasing popularity of the internet, the omnipresence of mobile phones have arguably been the developed world's most significant technological phenomena of the past 10 years. Whilst a decade ago the only mobiles around resembled house bricks and were mostly owned by ex-Yuppies, now pretty much everyone has them and some are so small, you need to carry a microscope to be able to see the numbers...
However, mobile phones themselves are evolving too into something more than just a tool to be able to make a convenient phone call with - they are also regarded as something of a fashion accessory, and each one can be personalised with a different fascia or even more uniquely, their own ring tone.
Newer Nokia phones (mostly the models produced from 2000 onwards) have a 'composer' feature which allows you to program in a sequence of musical notes to resemble the song of your choice which you can then use as a ringtone instead of having William Tell or one of the others which comes free with the phone. Unless your Charlotte Church, the chances are you won't be able to do it yourself, and have to go to a third party in order to be able to get a sassy new beepy tune to sing along to every time someone calls.
In newspapers there are copious numbers of adverts offering the chance to download new tones and picture icons for about £1 a pop. However, as the trendy wine-bar lady would say on the Nat West advert would say, there is another way...
On the Web, there are numerous different sites that offer you downloadable ring tones for free in addition to the ones which charge. However, many of these are filled with pop-ups and banners and can be hard to navigate. The quality of ring tone can also be pretty poor with many tunes pretty unrecognisable from the song they are supposed to be.
However, I have found a site (thanks to dooyoo...) where you can get good quality ring tones free of charge witho
ut having the distraction of a million and one windows opening...
www.phoneringsong.com offers a number of different products. Most apply only to Nokia phones, although there is also the facility to buy ring tones and graphics for the Ericsson T98 and T68I phones.
The Nokia ringtones are sorted alphabetically, and there are several hundred to choose from. Whilst not being the most comprehensive list available, it is reasonable up to date (for example, for people not sick of it already, you can download 'The Ketchup Song'). The sorting system is also straightforward to use. However, there are a few oddities in there. For example, it would be interesting to know just how many people wanted the tune to 'How Do You Do' by Roxette...
Unlike the tones that you pay for, you have to manually program the sequence of notes into your own phone rather than having them sent to you electronically. However, once you have chosen your ring tone, a sequence of numbers will appear in a new window and you just type them in according to how you see them on screen whilst in your phone's composer screen, set the tempo, and it's ready to use - simple!
The quality of the tunes I downloaded was also superb, especially when compared to other free sites. It is also extremely fast to both find the relevant tune you want and for the new window to appear with the patterns on it.
On the site, there also options to download screensavers, icons and picture messages, although when these links are selected, you go externally to another site and find out you have to pay for them... I chose not to do this, but there did seem like a good selection that was on offer.
As far as the sight design goes, it's not the most beautiful example of the www world, but it is functional which is at the end of the day, all you need it to be. The home page features a slight irritation in that a design fault leaves a little bit of
the main menu off the page with no scroll bars. However, each of the available options are readable, so that this isn't a big issue.
In all, it's a fairly decent site which should be visited by anyone who wants a new tone, but doesn't want to pay for it!
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