Cell phone ringtones are a popular fad today. When your cell phone receives a signal from the tower that it has an incoming call, it signals to you with the ringtone. The ringtone is the sound that comes from the cell phone when it receives an incoming call or message. This can be a ringing sound, a siren, a musical tune, etc. Cell phones come with a selection of ringtones and part of setting up the phone for use is to assign different ringtones to different people in your phonebook. You also assign ringtones to the different function like text messaging and voice messaging. When your phone rings then you can determine who is calling by what tune it is playing and don't have to look at the caller ID.

People like to personalize their cell phones with different ringtones. Part of the reason for this is to distinguish your phone ring from other when you are in a crowd. If everybody's phone plays the same tune, everybody has to check their cell phone to see which one has the incoming call. A unique ringtone allows you to identify your own phone from others.

Cell phone ringtones are a popular fad today as people are in to using popular voices or selections from popular songs for their ringtones. If you want new ringtones for your cell phone you can check on the internet with your carrier to see what they have available. You can also look through page after page of places providing ringtones. Most of these places require enrollment and are like book-of-the-month clubs in that you receive a specified number of free ringtones upon joining. After that you pay a monthly fee for a specified number of ringtones. The monthly fee can range up to ten or more dollar per month. Ringtones can be monophonic in which they play one note at a time. They can be polyphonic in which they play more than one note at a time. Excerpts from songs are called MP3 ringtones. There are also real sound ringtones that are sounds like sirens and animal sounds.

Ringtones are phone manufacturer and model specific. When you download ringtones you must be sure that you have the right ones for your cell phone or they won't work. Most places on the internet have them listed by manufacturer and model so don't even bother to look at what is available for cell phones other than yours.