Ring tone software

I hate paying for ring tones, for myself and especially for my daughters. I see software here and there that implies it can take an MP3 and upload it (more precisely, a clip from it) to your phone for use as a ringtone.

Do these work as advertised? I’ve got a Razr, my daughter (the big user) a Nokia 6215i.

Thanks - Jeff

It worked for my last phone. It was a motorola something-or-other that came with software that actually lets you crop mp3’s and upload just the cropped part to the phone. That’s how I got my BSG intro music on there for my ring (the ‘cylons were created by man’ bit).

Just got a new phone from work though and our old ones got turned in. We didn’t get any software with this one, but I think it’s the same model nokia that your daughter has. I was going to pick up a data cable and try playing with it this weekend.

It also greatly depends on your carrier. If you’ve got a Verizon-nuked RAZR, you’re up shit’s creek. On Cingular, you’ll have more luck.

First thing to do is get the software suite for the phone. For the Nokias, that’s Nokia PC Suite. I dunno what it is for Motos.

Once you get MP3s on the phone, you’re a short leap away from making them into a ringtone. You usually don’t need any special software. I personally prefer polyphonics, so I’ll download a kick-ass midi version, truncate the song in MidiMaestro, and copy the midi to my phone via bluetooth and set it as a ringtone.

But then, it’s really easy on my phones. YMMV.

For the Motorola Razr you want “motorola phone tools”. The cable you need is a standard USB to the standard mini-usb motorola phones have. It’s an official product for Motorola phones. It’s slick, easy to use, and surprisingly bug-free (a lot of software for consumer electronics is really… nasty to use.)

I haven’t used it in a while but from what I remember you just drag and drop an MP3. It’ll downsample it, and it has nice little sliders so you select which XXX seconds you want. IIRC the razors have a lot of memory so you can get away with using the whole bloody song if you like.

I recall there was some alternative. I think that’s what I did for the stupid verizon. You would upload your file from the internet to a service some people put up for free. Then they send you a SMS with the song in it and you click click to make it your ringtone.

There’s some syncing ability for phonebooks and notepad data as well. Makes it very easy to transfer phone numbers for the SIMless phones.

But yeah, Verizon locks their damn things. If they could charge everytime you turned your phone on, they would.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=25307

edit:

Amazon sells it for $15: http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Mobile-Phones-Retail-Packaged/dp/B000EYTBOS

according to this post from March 2006 it works for Motorola Razrs with Verizon:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=24794

I used a beta version of ToneThis and it was perfectly adequate for my needs. The beta version allowed me to select a specific segment of the clips I wanted to use, and did not limit me in any way. I think the commercial version is pretty much the same, only minus the ads you must see only while creating tones, and plus some additional software that you probably don’t need anyway. Some phones appear to be incompatible, but the software/phone can be fooled by selecting an “incorrect” model, so be sure to check their forums if you have issues (not sure about the Verizon-nuked RAZR thing).

Hmm - good stuff, thanks. I’ve got a T-Mobile razor, service the company uses. My family is currently on Verizon, and my daughters Nokia 6215i seems to be unsupported re: Nokia’s PC suite (Nokia’s site says no ring tones, etc. currently for the 6215i.)

Yeah, you’re hosed on the 6215i, it’s a Verizon exclusive model. Verizon pretty much told Nokia to take their PC Suite and shove it.

My new phone is locked and will only use a DRM infected mp3 as a ringtone. I’m sad. Sony Ericsson z710i with Fido in Canada.

I used http://www.bitpim.org/ to make ringtones from MP3s and install them via Bluetooth to my wife’s Verizon LG phone. No hacks required to the phone.

I hacked my Verizon Motorola E815 to turn on Bluetooth file transfer, then used Audacity to make the ringtone.

If you’re lazy you can go on HowardForums or Wireless Advisor and request ringtones made from song clips. You can also request rings from movies, like that one in Crank. I just requested the simple, generic one from Shooter.

If I do make my own, I use Motorola Phone Tools only I do it with a Bluetooth dongle, as the software doesn’t recognize my RAZR via USB data cable. Plus you can only “push” applications and games to it with via Bluetooth.

I haven’t tried it, but if you don’t have a Motorola phone, and don’t want to pay for/steal one of these song-to-ringtone programs, you could probably use Audacity and then transfer it to the phone via USB data cable or Bluetooth.

I have a Samsung phone with Sprint and there are a number of websites on which I can tell them my cellphone number and then upload ringtones (midi, wav, etc, formats) and the website will transfer the data to my phone via SMS through the cell network.

One of these sites claim it works with lots of non-Sprint phones too, so those of you with phones that are locked down but have SMS might want to give it a try:

http://rumkin.com/tools/sprint/

I’ve only used it with my Sprint phone and it works great for me, YMMV.

Well, I found and bought a simple $15 program with a simple interface that seems to do the trick - it will take the clip you make in it and directly send it to your phone via txt/pix messaging. It will also save the clip in normal and not so normal formats to the PC for you to transfer via a cable.

Unfortunately, the damned 6215i is a stepchild, and no one I can find has a PC - phone cable. Nokia’s website treats it like a relative they’re ashamed of, with practically no support and no accessories or software, and Verizon has no PC to phone kit for it.

Ah, dude, don’t pay for that shit. Here’s how you’d make ringtones in Audacity for free.

For Motorola phones try Motorola Phone Tools.

Neat. Unfortunately, LG has completely locked out my LG150 for data transfers :( (but only on the Canadian models). I guess I should’ve read the manual before going out and buying a bluetooth adaptor.

Go to a local non-affiliated cell phone store and have them unlock it.

You know what, I’ve had so much trouble with MPT I’m just not going to bother anymore. It can never properly detect my RAZR v3, probably the most popular Motorola on the market ATM, so much so that people are already calling it the “Zach Morris phone” in jest, and I have such a hard time getting anything to transfer using it. The media studio feature is pretty cool, but I can do that in Audacity without all the headaches, and then just use BlueSoleil, or whatever Bluetooth program came with my $15 dongle, to get stuff onto and off of my phone. Plus, you can’t even “push” applications or games onto a phone through MPT.

The I phone will come with the ability to take any of your songs from I tunes and turn them into ring tones.

Actually I don’t know if that’s true at all but it makes the I-phone sound cool.

Here’s the trick for most Verizon phones (I do this myself on mine):

First, make your short audio clip in MP3 format using whatever program you like. Audacity is nice and free. Make it mono, stop on the bitrate a bit, so it’s small.

Mail the mp3 file to "[email protected]" except substitute my bogus 555 number for your own. Put a subject in the subject line, you don’t really need text in the body.

Here’s the important part - don’t send that email with Outlook or something! It probably won’t work, due to the way most stand-alone email programs send binaries. But gmail, gmail works great. So use your gmail account to send that .mp3.

Your phone will receive the email sent to [email protected] as a text message (handy to remember at other times, too), with a sound attachment. Just save it as a ringtone on your phone, and you’re good to go.

This simple method depends a bit upon the features of your phone, but most of the newer phones will do it. And it’s free, easy, and requires no funky software as long as you can make the MP3 clip you want for the ringtone.

Nope, you can’t use all your music loaded onto the iPhone through iTunes as a ringtone. There have been rumors that Apple would add a ringtones section to iTunes, but now the rumor is they aren’t.

I’d imagine that AT&T wants none of either of those things. Ringtones are ridiculously huge business.

Of course, even if you could do that, the iPhone still has that major problem of requiring you to be on AT&T. So you have to give money to that company that wiretaps and datamines its customers for the NSA without warrant. I mean all cell providers suck, but that’s over the line for me. I’ll never give AT&T my money if I can avoid it.