“Houston, We have a problem.” is the famous Tom Hanks line from the Apollo 13 movie. It must have been repeated a billion times in a million places and would most likely qualify as a cliché.

Listen then download the Iphone ringtone version.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This ringtone is guaranteed to drive just about anyone crazy. Imagine a psycho granny demanding that you answer the phone at 3am in the morning and this is what you will hear.

preview

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is the Hello Ringtone.

Imagine a man down a deep hole trying to get someones attention…. Hello, Hello

Being on the other side of the world that won’t be getting the Iphone for a while if ever I’ve been scouring review sites looking for information on Iphone’s ringtone capabilities.

I was a little dissappointed to read this

Although the phone contains a complete iPod, you can’t use your songs as ringtones. [source]

It looks like Apple has sewn up the market for itself and the Itunes store. It’s a bit of let down, especially considering that their number one product was made popular by people putting there own songs on it.

There are so many phones on the market at the moment that allow sideloading I don’t think Apple could label this a competitive feature.

Lets hope that there are some hackers that lined up to buy the new Iphone and are right now working out how to get around this money grabbing limitation.

Mac Rumours is reporting that Apple plans to charge users 99cents to convert MP3′s into a 30 second extract for use as ringtones. The scary bit is

Reportedly, the new version of iTunes will allow you to convert any song that is available on iTunes into a ringtone with the “Make into Ringtone” feature. The cost for this service is $.99. It’s not clear, based on information available, whether or not CD-ripped songs can also be easily converted or this is specifically an iTunes Store feature.

I’m hoping Apple has seen the light and allows users to sideload their own mp3′s as ringtones.

Just about everywhere is reporting that the only option for getting ringtones onto the soon to be released Apple Iphone is via sideloading with Itunes.

I love it.

I’m conjecturing that Apple’s idea is to push more business through it’s Itunes store. That’s not a bad thing. Itunes store charges $0.99 for most tracks where as the carriers and other ringtone providers are charging $2.50 or more to get a single tune as a ringtone. (don’t get me started on the services that charge five bucks plus a week to subscribe)

The hype surrounding the Iphone is going to make a major impact on the phone market in the US where it is due to be released on 29th June. The carry through from that is the industry is going to realise people will be saving themselves a fortune by not being ripped off every time they want to put a new ringtone on their phone so more phones will be released with sideloading features.

I figure that by the time we have gone through the product cycle another 1-2 times there won’t be a cell phone that doesn’t offer sideloading and it will kill the ringtone market as we know it.

Pocket Picks has an article on how people can now download their music from their home computer to there phone from anywhere.

It involves setting up winamp and winamp remote on your computer then pointing your phones web browser to winamp.orb.com

I’m not sure if it’s a download or streaming service but I’ll leave it for someone else to try as my data charges with my provider are horrendous. I think I’ll stick to sideloading.

Put simply sideloading is transferring content or data from a computer to a mobile phone.

Sideloading is a great thing, it cuts down the cost of transferring ringtones, wallpapers etc to your phone. So instead of paying $6 day/week/month or whatever over priced fee they offer, you can copy your favourite mp3 across to your phone for free.
Another bonus is that you can also transfer things off your phone and onto your computer.

I get quite snap happy with my phone when I’m out with my friends. To transfer my pictures via wap or email costs me a fortune, so it was very rare I bothered.

My current phone (Motorola V6 Maxx) connects directly to my computers USB port with the same cable I use for my digital camera.

A survey conducted by Orange shows that 13% of users are now sideloading ringtones onto their phones.

Cellphone carriers were initially cool to the concept of sideloading. It cuts back on their revenue as you no longer need to use your data allowance to transfer ringtones, nor do they get their share for putting the cost of the ringtone onto your phone bill. (sometimes up to 50% of the price the consumer pays).

Some carriers restrict the sideloading feature on the phones they sell with firmware but this seems to be reducing as demand for the service picks up.

I can see sideloading taking off over the next few years as more modern phones penetrate the market and people get used to the concept. I can’t wait !

Pocket Picks has produced a simple tutorial showing how you can shrink down your mp3′s to make them more suitable to use as ringtones. The tutorial uses the freely available Itunes software so more anyone can do it without paying for overpriced ringtones.

A survey in the UK shows that of the people that changed ringtones in the last three months only 13% were dumb enough to pay for them. [via ringtonia]
I’d love to see this figure drop down to an even lower number. Most people seem to think that just because the ringtone providers advertise a lot that it’s the only way to get a ringtone onto your phone.