How were ring tones developed? We should get curious to know the initial stage of the ring tone development, which was through RTTTL (Ring Tone Text Transfer Language) format. This is a simple text based format used to create music. It can be downloaded into your mobile via infrared or Bluetooth or even SMS.

Based on the initial stage of RTTTL, the Monophonic ring tones were developed. This is a very simple ring tones which are commonly found in older mobiles Nokia 3210 is an example. Monophonic ring tones are capable of making one sound at a time. As the name suggests, each tune was created note by note, and the sound was also developed at various frequency, thereby sounding a simple melodic tune. From the creation of Monophonic ring tone, another format of music was created called MIDI (Musical Instrumental Digital Interface).

The ring tone industry witnessed the emergence of a superior format through the introduction of polyphonic ring tones. In this type of ring tone, more than 16 separate notes can be played at the same time, thereby creating a better result than in the Monophonic ring tone. The tunes are almost similar to the real music. Most of the modern phones can play the polyphonic ring tone.

After a lot of technology advancement, Real tone finally came into the ring tone picture. Real tone or Music Tone is the actual real sound of the original music. They are not in the MIDI format, but only recorded tunes such as actual singer songs and even voice recorded sound: music which the phone can play but cannot produce as in the case of MIDI format. Mobiles which are capable of playing the real tone can also play MIDI format music but not vise versa. Other names for real tone are MP3, and true tones. The sound quality output is crisp clear as that heard from a CD. Depending on the model of the mobile, full track music albums can be downloaded into the hand-set to be used for various purposes, such as MP3 player, or using any of the MP3 music as a ring tone. Also assigning different ring tone to different identities within the address book of the hand-set is a feature which many users prefer to have.

Another step in the technology came through the creation of Video Ring tones. When a caller receives an incoming call, a small video clip along with a MP3 file is played. Even though this form of ring tone has been developed, it never became so popular and in demand amongst the people. It could be a new source of marketing for the mobile ring tone websites.

Now we have another truly amazing development through a ring tone called Name tone. As the name implies, it's a real tone but having your name in it. For example, when there is an incoming call, one can hear their own names in the ring tone ?Jane you have a call, please pick it up?, ? Jane you have a message, please answer it?. This all depends on the model of the mobile brand. It allows the owner to input his/her name and choose the type of ringtone music you would like to hear your name been called. It supports the real tone format only. Name tones are the latest in fashion, cool and fun to have in your hand-set.