Andre LouisListening to old Nokia ringtones from the N95, which was the last phone I got near the end of 2007 and being way more impressed by the quality compared to most of today's offerings from the big companies. Apple, Samsung, Google etc, you have a lot to learn and you've had years to do it. Still not impressed.
tesla89@FreakyFwoof hell yeah, love the ringtones from old cellphones as I am a phone collector.
@Blazyenterprises Then I hope you know about the site I started back in 2006 where tons and absolutely stupid amounts of ringtones are stored? http://3.onj.me/phonetones
@FreakyFwoof hell yeah, I look at that site at least twice a day
x0@FreakyFwoof If you're talking about the trend towards minimalism, I wonder if the existence of the iTunes ringtones store and whatever Google's equivalent is is a reason for that? After all, why ship great ringtones with the phone if you can buy them, and the vendor gets a cut? Did the Nokia and the like have something like this? Besides possibly loading your own ringtones onto it via computer?
@x0 It was much easier to just put files on a memory card and tell that to be a ringtone back then.
@FreakyFwoof OK, so it could do that. The ringtones store is of course for people who are lazy and/or not tech savvy enough to do that. And those same people are likely to just use the defaults. At least Apple's latest wave of them, the Encore Infinitum project, appear to be doing something interesting for a change, their previous ones are quite meh.
miki@x0 @FreakyFwoof Nokia (like most other manufacturers back then) was very carrier-friendly, and most people would get ringtones via WAP. You'd send a text to a premium number and get a ringtone back via WAP push. You could find the right number and text to send on special websites, in newspaper ads, or sometimes even on the radio.
I've never actually done this myself, but have had multiple family members do it in my presence. That's what people did if they weren't into tech and didn't know how to use the fancy phone transfer cables and computer programs.
Since these weird retro communication protocols definitely peak my interest, I've done some reading about how this stuff was implemented on a technical level at one point, and it was essentially a WAP URL specially encoded as a text message that your phone could interpret. It would then connect to your carrier's WAP gateway through whatever brarer it supported, and that gateway would translate the quaint WAP protocol to ordinary HTTP over TCP/IP and speak that to the remote server. There's more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_ProtocolPush
James Scholes@miki I once burned through £20 of credit (a lot for a young teenager) in about 30 seconds because of scammy premium-rate shenanigans. The TV ad said I could get a ringtone for £2.50 or whatever, but failed to mention (at least in an accessible way) that each incoming text would cost the same amount or more, and that they would follow up multiple times. @x0 @FreakyFwoof
@jscholes @miki @x0 I didn't quite have that experience but I had an EE mobile broadband device with *no* keypad or way to say 'yes' to a text, but I started noticing some nasty charges on that line which didn't make sense. got in touch with EE and they said 'yes, you signed up for a daily text from a company called GamesHaus.'
I did not say yes to receiving text. I could have done so on the website for the device but trust me, that was way more effort than it was worth. About £2/text, every day or so.
When I told them that this was a mobile broadband device *not* a phone, they had to backtrack, refund me the money and yeah.
I did not say yes to receiving text. I could have done so on the website for the device but trust me, that was way more effort than it was worth. About £2/text, every day or so.
When I told them that this was a mobile broadband device *not* a phone, they had to backtrack, refund me the money and yeah.
@FreakyFwoof @jscholes @x0 As an aside, I'm really sad that online payments via text didn't become more popular internationally .
They were a thing here, especially for smaller, online-only purchases like file downloads or coins in a game. You could also use them for subscriptions. One of our audiobook services still let you do that until very recently, because our traditional online payment methods don't do subscriptions and a lot of older people don't know what a CVV is.
@FreakyFwoof @jscholes @x0 Oh yeah, those were a thing.
When I was little, I remember people getting a lot of these scammy ads, texts and sometimes even calls, usually promising riches for sending just that one message, but it was never just one message in practice.
I remember one variant where they'd call you with an extremely simple, multiple-choice question which you had to answer via DTMF. Most people would answer correctly, and get a text informing them that they won and asking whether they wanted to get the reward. If you answered yes, they'd ask you what city to send the reward to, what street, what house number, what color, whether you'd like to receive it soon or later, whether you want a pamflet for their other services with your reward, what size you prefer, whether you're interested in other services they offered, and so on and so on. Of course, every question was a separate text that you had to answer if you wanted your reward, and all of them were quite expensive. You always thought that it was "just one more", and if you already spend so much money on it, you may as well finish the process and get your damn reward.
Most people would give up at some point and lose all that money, which is why this business was so profitable.
Big Pawed Bear@miki @x0 @FreakyFwoof I remember doing this! omg! you'd use your payg *pay as you go* credit for such things.
KasTas@miki @x0 @FreakyFwoof oh yeah. There were loads of bussinesess booming due to these kind of "microtransactions" back in ~2000 (exact time-range may vary depending on the country). The same goes goes for "wallpapers" and games.
@FreakyFwoof Oh wait. the cool metal one, or the not as cool plastic one?
@SirMars I had the original N95, but loved that phone.
@FreakyFwoof @SirMars I had the Nokia 3660, 6630, and 6650 phones… The 6650 I got in 2009, when I actually switched from T-Mobile to AT&T, the 6630 I bought in 2006, and I remember getting an international adapter, that I had no idea what to do with, because there didn’t seem to be a international to US converter… At least according to RadioShack. That phone was clearly an international phone, because it said call divert instead of call forward… That amused me to no end. I actually bought the 3660 in 2004, (which was my first jump into the Symbian market/Nokia), off of eBay, got into a bit of a bidding war, and paid more than I probably should’ve for it, it only worked for maybe half a year, and then it died for some inexplicable reason… I might still have the 6630… Somewhere… I know I have the 6650 as well… I don’t even know if talks is still in existence for that matter. Sorry for the long post
@kd0ess @FreakyFwoof I had the Nokia 5560 I think. It was a stupid nokia from Cingular at the time. I used to drool to Frys electronics and drool on all the unlocked phones they sold from Asia and other areas. I wanted the Nokia 95 sooo badly.
@FreakyFwoof @SirMars i’m sorry, now looking at Andre‘s phone site, I did have the 6650 fold… It was the flip phone… Epic!
Borris@FreakyFwoof And in this day, people are like "ringtones play when some annoying thing happens." LOL, how things have changed.
Rachel keyte@FreakyFwoof I've got the archive of the Nokia ringtones which you had compiled. Really cool!
@Rachelk No idea how old that is, there are hundreds of phones in the archive these days so you probably don't have a lot, if you downloaded years ago.
@FreakyFwoof Oh wow, no idea. Probably in about 2006 or seven or something. I'll have to go and revisit that
@Rachelk Well the site has been running constantly for all that time so whatever you have is just... Yeah. Forget out-of-date, try grannytastic.
@FreakyFwoof Cool thanks. I also had the archive of the keyboard demos that you compiled as well which I downloaded about the same time. they are really cool as I love listening to them especially from the vintage era of cassio, Yamaha and all them great stuff.
@Rachelk Well that's up at around 30 GB these days, so again, old. How big is the copy you have?
@FreakyFwoof Wow! No idea as my data is on a hard drive, as I no longer have my big PC. I'll let you know when I check. Haha
@FreakyFwoof @Rachelk So many ringtones!
@FreakyFwoof @Rachelk Hehehe. I wonder what sort of cocophony you would get by playing them all at the same time?
@FreakyFwoof @mcourcel I wonder if there's any new ringtones in iOS 18
@mcourcel @Rachelk @SorenApplicati1 @FreakyFwoof Even if they are disappointing, which is usually the case, if new ringtones show up, they usually don’t appear until the gold master builds anyway.
@BorrisInABox @mcourcel @Rachelk @SorenApplicati1 I do like some of the new? iOS 17 notification sounds, and that you can finally change stupid Tritone for something else. PS. Tritone is not even a tritone it's misleading. Anyway...
@FreakyFwoof @mcourcel @Rachelk @SorenApplicati1 Someone who knows even less about music theory than I do clearly named that thing.
@BorrisInABox @FreakyFwoof @mcourcel @Rachelk @SorenApplicati1 Is it not truly called a tritone because the three tones that are present do not occur at the same time?