Okay, I understand that a certain and apparently very large portion of the population demand sickeningly poor renditions of vaguely trendy music to blare out of their tiny ear dildos on demand to prove to the rest of the world that they’re popular enough to have people talk to them.
That’s okay with me, really. I don’t understand it but it obviously works for everyone else so I’ve resigned myself to accept it. But when you sell a phone of which not ONE of the built-in ringtones is anything mildly approaching neutral, then that really fucking sucks.
I DONT want my phone to sound like a 12 piece rock band. I DONT want my phone to sound like the latest movie soundtrack. I just want it to sound like a goddamn phone. I want it to RING. But apparently, theres just not enough demand for phones that sound like actual phones.
So FUCK you Samsung and the syphilitic teeny bopper trend watchers who apparently inhabit your development and marketing teams. And while I’m at it, fuck you motorola for completely failing to understand the basic principles of good design and user interfaces. And fuck you Mitsubishi for making a phone which emits an annoyingly large blaring digital sound effect extravaganza which can’t be disabled whenever the phone is switched on and off.
The last and, co-incidentally first phone I ever owned that I was even mildly impressed with was the Nokia 7110 which seemed to be designed by people who actually understood the purpose of a phone and wasn’t willing to cut corners to save a few pennies. I’m done with this bullshit.
(and in case you were wondering, all my phones since my nokia broke down have been gifts).
Try what I do. I set my phone to vibrate and carry it in my shirt pocket. Right against the ring in my left nipple. A true win-win situation. Call me anytime;)
Every other advert on the MTV and VH1 channels over here are for ring-tones. The ones which are being pushed at the moment are that crazy frog , a duck and some unidentified animal that farts!
A lot of teenagers have signed up for what they think is just one ring tone and end-up receiving a whole succession of them. This has meant that some of them have run up phone bills of hundreds of pounds. OK the T & C’s roll across the screen at a vast rate of knots but who reads the small print ?
I agree that most of them are crap anyway but they do seem to be in demand. I reckon my ring-tone is the best. It’s the theme from the TV series Trumpton. How many Brits remember that ?
I feel your pain. I have a Nokia (somethingorother) and when I went to select a ringtone, there were no ringtones that actually rang… I could choose things like Bee Boogie, Tap Dance or something similar, but nothing that just rang…
I was helping my technophobic co-worker fiddle with her phone and there weren’t any phone-sounding rings on hers either. She was jealous of mine which has three or four different “actual ring” ring tones.
I have 7 or 8 people who call me regularly. I assigned each of them a different ringtone so I’d know who they were before I even took it out of my pocket. I get lots of compliments on my ringtones, now that you mention it. Particularly my dad’s (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda) and my brother’s (Eye of the Tiger).
Like Lord Ashtar, I have different ring tones although mine are for different types of messages: text message, call, voice message etc. I prefer the unusual ringtones because I hate being in a room with a million people and everyone having to check their phone when one rings. My current main ring is the Imperial March from Star Wars.
Well, my phone has the absolute worst ringtones preprogrammed. They suck. My choices were birds chirping, a cat meowing with a stupid little song, the T-Mobile bell, and some other horrible songs. So I downloaded ONE (I didn’t want to become addicted to it) that I could live with. So now my phone plays Kashmir by Led Zepplin. I just couldn’t bear the cat meow (and that was the BEST one they had!).
About ten years ago I was at a Wendy’s restuarant (having ordered the salad-bar lunch, which they no longer offer… but that’s a rant for another time) and I heard a cell phone ring.
You remember, the original beedle-deedle-deedle sound that cell phones USED to make, right?
I saw no fewer than SIX people reach for their cell phone and hold them up to their collective ears and say “Hello?”.
Now, at the time, that was a FUNNY anecdote. Being as only high-powered people had cellphones (you know, doctors, lawyers, CEO’s, etc). Certainly no average having-lunch-at Wedndy’s-type would have one. Too expensive to just ‘chat’ on a cell, right? After all, the lightest ones weighed in at about 3/4lb. :rolleyes:
At the time, the thought occured to me that individual (dare I say, personalized?) ring-tones would make it so that people wouldn’t have to say “Is that you or me?” when they heard a cell-phone ring.
Well, depending on where you work, sometimes you have to make your phone different, or everyone starts slapping at their hips saying “Is that your phone?”.
Though I admit that my ancient cell-phone’s actual phone-style ring-tones now stand out fine amongst tinny renditions of ‘It’s a small world’.
Dunno about your carrier, but a lot of the “Buy a ringtone from us” services have normal-sounding telephone rings as part of their selection. It might be worth it to cough up the $1 or $2 just to be able to get a plane-jane ring on your phone.
(Me? I got a USB data cable and download my own stuff. Screw the carriers and their scams! )
I have Bill Cosby from his 1970s sitcom saying, “Hey Dummy! Answer the phone!”
Okay, I don’t really. I have it currently set to a ring tone that sounds exactly like an older phone with real bells in it. Sometimes it scares the fuck out of me because I forgot what I set it to.
My phone comes with a bunch of normal-ish rings that sound like they may come from an actual phone. I keep it on the normal “ring-ring” setting, because downloading anything interesting would cost too much.
And they don’t have the Inspector Gadget theme available for my phone.
My Kyocera came with quite a few neutral ringtones, as well as some awful awful song ones. But I managed to snag the Super Mario Bros. theme for free so I use that.
Ringtone songs are still better than the rings that try to pump actual MP3s out of the thing . . . It sounds like a poorly-tuned radio that’s been thrown down the stairs a few too many times.
Someone at work has been bugging me to transfer her MP3s to her cell phone. I’ve got a cable of some kind, but no instructions. Anyone know what kinda program you use, anyhow?
A friend’s husband has a “ringtone” (I use the term loosely) that starts off slowly, with the sound of a train chugging towards you…and then the train whistle starts to blow. Getting louder and louder. She said, “Imagine having that go off while you’re driving down the road!” My response was, “That would be the last time it ever happened, if I had any say in the matter!” Even with all the MP3s and who knows what else you hear everywhere now, that is the single most obnoxious one I have ever heard. Not just because it could scare some poor unsuspecting driver half to death if he happened to be riding in their car when the damn thing went off.
Most of the other ringtones I despise.