Although I’ve had a celphone of some kind for almost 20 years (yes!), I don’t use it much anymore (partly because my house is in a cel radio shadow). But my shoebox-sized model is showing its age, and maybe it’s time to get a new one.
I don’t need anything fancy; I don’t care about built-in cameras, TV reception, smoke or alien detectors, but it might be nice to customize the ringtone.
So educate me on how this works. Ideally, I would like to use a ringtone of one of my own compositions/acoustic recordings (not a midi file). Is this possible? Will any (cheap) model phone play a sound file? And if so, can I convert an existing WAV or MP3 file and download it to my phone myself, easily, cheaply?
Another question. Do any phones have the possibility of storing more than one ringtone and playing a specific one for a specific caller ID? Or maybe playing one at random or in sequence just for variety?
There’s monophonic (usually proprietary format), polyphonic (usually midi) and real/mp3 (a sampled audio recording). Usually the cheaper phones only support polyphonic but that’s slowly changing. Also getting a custom ringtone onto the phone might be harder than you think. You will need to use IR, Bluetooth or a USB cable or set up a WAP site from which your phone can download it. To get more info I guess you will have to ask a more specific question, but we’re always glad to help
Well, pretty much any computer nowadays can handle a USB cable, so that doesn’t sound too bad. But I haven’t found much in the way of format conversion software. And it looks like there is VHS/Beta war in formats going on from what you say, so maybe I’d better get the phone first.
It’s not a VHS/Beta was but rather evolution. I believe almost any cell phone that plays real recordings as ring tones stores them as Mp3(correct me if I’m wrong). Those that store notes (polyphonic) usually store them as a midi file and are typically cheaper/older phones.
Also, I’ve seen phones where the cheapest USB connector cable I could find was $120, so don’t discount bluetooth/IR as a phone feature before checking out the price of a USB cable for that particular phone(some require extra hardware to do Usb)
The phones I’ve used can have one ringtone for calls with caller ID, another for restricted/unavailable caller ID, and then you can also choose a custom ringtone for each person in your contact list. I’ve never seen a random or sequential ringtone feature.
With many phones, you can also send ringtones by email. With Verizon Wireless, for example, you can attach a MIDI or MP3 file to an email message and send it to your_10_digit_phone_number@vzwpix.com. It’s billed like a picture message, which is 25 cents if you don’t have a package.
I have to rename MP3 files to .mid to keep Verizon’s email gateway from wrecking them, but the phone doesn’t mind. (The gateway tries to convert my MP3 attachments to the QCP format for some reason, and it makes them sound staticky. QCP is Qualcomm’s voice codec… some old phones can play QCP ringtones but not MP3s.)
You can also use an applet on the phone to buy ringtones from your carrier, if you want to spend $2 for 30 seconds of a pop song.
Also I would suggest: there are cellphone unlocking programs available, for accessing features for free that the cellphone provider would rather charge you for doing. What you can do depends much on the modelof phone; sometimes you can access a regular feature for free, other times you can just use it in an alternate way (for example, on most camera-phones you can use hacked drivers to offload pictures directly to your PC, but there’s no way to send them over the phone service without paying for that). At the moment I can’t recall the forum I found this at, but they did tell you for each phone what features could be unlocked or “alternately used” and if there were any untoward risks or consequences.
I learned this recentlly when I got a cellphone. I specifically asked about using the cellphone as a laptop modem (with my own ISP) for internet access–and the cellphone place said that it wasn’t possible except with older analog phones (that are no longer supported) and the more-expensive “high-speed wireless” phones and plans. This turned out to be total bullshit. After poking around online I found that ANY CDMA-compliant cell phone will work as a modem, with only the proper drivers and the connecting cable. It’s slow but it’s better than nothing. The cable you can get quite cheaply online and the drivers you can download for free–search for “curitel driver”.
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If you’re on Verizon and you have an America’s Choice plan and a 1X-capable phone, you can get medium-speed (up to 144 kbps) internet access too, using the same cable and drivers.
Even with an older phone, you can still get online without needing your own ISP. IIRC, it’s the same number, just use “qnc” for the username and password.
People who buy ringtones are crazy IMO. I can easily email or MMS myself a properly formatted MP3 ringtone, no need to buy it. Just take your favorite song, make a short, mono MP3 file encoded at 56kps and off you go. Same things with screen savers and backgrounds…no need to pay $1 for a crappy picture.
