Ring tone: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

A ring tone is the sound made by a telephone when ringing. The term is most often used to refer to the customisable sounds available on mobile phones. The facility was originally provided so that people would be able to determine when their phone was ringing when in the company of other mobile phone owners.

Ring tones, along with operator logos, have proven a popular method of personalising phones — a major industry has popped up to tailor to the needs of people to customise their phones, and newer phones include features to allow users to create their own tones. Many people enjoy their personalization of the phones, but some find certain ringtones annoying in public and in certain public situations.

An alternative to a ringtone is a vibrating alert. It is especially useful:

• in noisy environments
• in places where ring tone noise would be disturbing
• for the hearing impaired

A phone only rings when a special "ring signal" is sent to it. For regular telephones, the ring signal is a 90-volt 20-hertz AC wave generated from the switch that the telephone is connected to. For mobile phones, the ring signal is a specific radio-frequency signal.

Types of Ring Tone

Monophonic Ringtones

Early phones had the ability to have ring tones programmed into them using an internal ringtone composer. Later, various formats were developed to enable ring tones to be sent via text using RTTL encoding.

Polyphonic Ringtones

Many phones are now able to play more complex polytones; up to 16 individual notes with different instruments are played simultaneously to give a more realistic musical sound. Mobile phone handsets manufacturers have taken full advantage of new technologies to improve speakers in order to produce a better sound quality. Some polyphonic ringtones are now almost as good as the original records, and the quality is continually improving. It is likely only a matter of time before all new mobile phones are produced with polyphonic capabilities.