Personalised ring tones for function as well as fashion

Whether it’s Justin Bieber, Mozart or the Crazy Frog theme song, choosing your own mobile phone ring tone is still one of the most popular ways for people to personalise their phones.

In fact, last year alone mobile phone users around the world spent a whopping US$2.1bn on new ringtones for their phones. To give that figure some context, online music downloads from services like iTunes earned around US$3.6bn in the same year.

The ability to be able to assign your favourite song to alert you to incoming calls or texts is not confined to the latest smartphones – but rather it is a feature that has been available for many years and is offered in a large number of handsets.

Currently 260 phone models in the GARI database have the ability to assign different ring tones to particular phone contacts, and while we can all enjoy the feature, it has additional value for people who have trouble reading the caller ID on their phone screen.

For those with vision impairment, the ability to assign a memorable ring tone to certain contacts in their phone can let them know who is calling before they even take the phone out of their pocket or handbag.

In addition to assigning special ring tones to important contacts, some models also let you assign a personalised tone or alert to the many other functions on your phone including emails, text messages, missed calls and voicemail.

So depending on the alert, someone with impaired vision can recognise which email account just received a new message or whether they have a missed call or voicemail message.

To search for a phone model that has these features check the ‘Ring Tone Variations ‘ box under the vision features section of our online search tool or by clicking on the 'find phones' link at the top of this page.