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Cingular Ringtones
The selection of Cingular ringers got also improved by the merger between Cingular and AT&T Wireless. This is mainly because AT&T had an exclusive partnership with NTT DoCoMo, the global leader in the ringtone business. If you have a Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens or Sony Ericsson cell phone with a Cingular plan, you mostly are able to download ringtones. First, you have to check that the cell phone is capable of downloading Cingular ringers. Furthermore, your phone might support different versions of ringers, such as EMS or SuperTones (MP3 & WAV) ringers. Also, generally speaking, you can't download ringers between different brands, such as Motorola ringtones to a Nokia phone. Cingular Ringtones Services Cingular ringtones are available for Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony Ericsson cell phones (not all models, however). The official cell phone ringer service is actually run by a company called Infospace Mobile, which operates many ringer sites besides the one for Cingular. In order to get Cingular ringers, there are three conditions: 1. A ringtone capable phone Cingular has ringers in three categories: monophonic ringers, polyphonic ringing tunes, and Super Tones. Your cell phone determines which types you can use. Monophonic ringers are simple beebs, polyphonics sound somewhat more like actual music, and Super Tones are comparably good quality music/sound clips in MP3/WAV formats. You can also download Cingular ringtones with a wireless Internet capable phone, if you download ringers directly from the company. The Cingular ringers costs depend on the type of ringer you purchase. Prices for monotonic ringing tones are currently at $0.99, polyphonic tunes are $1.99, and Super Tones range from $1.99 to $2.49 (depending on the type of Super Tone, sound effect, music, or voice). Additional charges for kilobytes or minutes used apply if downloading the Cingular ringers. The Types of Cingular Ringtones Available As mentioned, a regular ringtone provider company that has a selection of ringers in their database runs the service for Cingular. However, you can easily purchase ringers from other ringer providers as well. In fact, this way you can find better (and newer) ringers and more content to choose from. One such company is midiringtones.com. Categories of Cingular ringtones in the service include: Urban (r&b, hip hop) To find Cingular ringers, see Cingularextras.com Price of Cingular Ringtones If you download ringers via SMS, you know in advance how much the total cost for the ringer is (the messages are called premium SMS messages, and they cost much more than normal SMS messages would). But, if you download with a wireless web browser, you have to pay, in addition to the cost of the Cingular ringtones, the fee for the airtime. And if you don’t have a GPRS phone, the airtime can be very expensive over the long term (basic GSM technology is about 7-10 times slower than GPRS). Therefore, I would recommend that you use the wireless web browser capability to download Cingular ringtones only if you have GPRS cell phone and a GPRS cell phone plan. As a final note, if you shop around for Cingular ringtones, you can get your favorite tune for next to nothing, because the competition is so fierce in the GSM ringtones market. However, in that case you may have to pay for the Cingular ringers in a more inconvenient way (than the Cingular Extras Service is). |