Do All Phones Allow Programmable Ringtones?

In the 1990’s, some of the mobile manufactures like Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens initiated a new feature in which a mobile phone user could compose a ringtone on a mobile or even send a programmable ringtone from computer to phone. Some mobile sets offer audio-mixers to enable mixing of rhythms and sounds to create a ring tone. Themes were also introduced along with programmable ring tones by companies like Microsoft and Motorola. Some of the ring tones are free and downloadable from sites such as Napster or Jamster.

Some cell phones are including installed composers which allow users to compose a new melody alert by typing some series of keys.

There has been a lot of confusion about mobile phones lately. After buying them, people are often disheartened to know that they cannot add, compose or receive polyphonic ring tones on their mobile phones. Well, it depends upon the mobile you are buying and how many features does the company provides the user with respect to the mobile set.

Mobile phone manufactures like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola initially had blocked the users from adding ring tones all by themselves from the internet for free of cost. This was done intentionally in order to force users to buy ring tones from them.

A major portion of the South American mobile industry was affected by this feature in the year 2002, because the mobile phones manufactured during 2001-2002, were devoid of this functionality to allow programmable ring tones into their mobile sets.

More than 10 popular mobile phone brands support customizable ring tones, including well-known brands such as Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola.

Does your phone allow programmable ringtones? Here is how to find that out by yourself:

1.The first step is to take a look at the user manual you were given along with the mobile set at the time you bought it. If in case, you have misplaced it, you can always open the official website of the company to which your phone belongs. You can always find the online versions of their cell phone manuals.

2.When you are ready with the manual, open the index and search for "Melody Composer", "My melodies", or "Ring tone Composer".

3.If you have these facilities on your mobile phone manual, then that means your phone allows for programmable ring tones and has a melody composer. It means that you can send and receive polyphonic ring tones on your mobile. All you need to do from now on is to browse the internet for the collection of free ring tones.

4.If you don’t find any such facility in your mobile phone manual, then your mobile can accept the ring tones only by a SMS.

5.To assure that you can still receive ring tines by SMS, you can always refer to the promotional literature. An alternative is also to browse to your cell phone company's web site, where they also describe all the phones that they sell along with their features.

6.Sanyo, Kyocera, Nokia or a Motorola mobile phones can receive programmable ring tones for free except if it's and iDEN Motorola phone. On the other hand, mobile sets like Sprint PCS, Samsung or LG, will require a paid service to accept ring tones by SMS.