Ringtones
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 mobilephone 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.
MP3 Ringtones / Real Tones
Real tones are as the name suggests, real life sounds, voices and
sound-alike tracks for use as a ring tone for your phone. A large
number of phones now support realtones and they do sound great,
so expect to see the range continue to grow with ongoing weekly
updates.
Monophonic Ringtones
For those who don't have a polyphonic or realtone capable phone
yet, or just find music ringtones annoying, there's still a great
range of monophonic ringtones to choose from. From Rock music
to Nokia FX the range is wide enough that anyone can find something
they like. As with all other ringtone types these are updated.
Polyphonic Ringtone
A polyphonic ringtone is a
ringtone that makes use of polyphony. Many mobile phones make
use of such ringtones as options for customization by customers.
The first polyphonic ringtones used sequenced recording methods
such as MIDI. Such recordings specify what instrument should play
a note at a given time, but the actual instrument sound is dependent
upon the playback device. Nokia introduced its first car phone,
the Mobira Senator, in 1982 and the world's first hand-held NMT
mobile phone, the Mobira Cityman, in 1987.