I'm currently on-call for work this week and this consists of having to carry around a second phone with me. It's now at the point where every time I hear that particular ringtone, (be it because I have the phone, or because someone else has the same ringtone) I cringe, curse and get really pissed off. I've also had enough stressors going on that I need to think of a new text alert for my personal phone because every time I hear it now I get an anxious feeling. Focus: What is your ringtone or text alert? Alt Focus: How often do you change said alert?
I have the default for both, and obviously I never change it. The phone ringing is one of the worst sounds I hear all day.
Mine are mostly default, except for the txt message one. I rarely here it though as it is mostly on vibrate (read all the fucking time). I miss a lot of calls/txts. I tend to dislike the people who have obnoxious ringtones, but I know someone who recently got a smartphone, and they have been matching music with certain people when they call. This is my ringtone when I call him: Needless to say, I try to call him as much as possible.
I find that most default ring tones bug the fuck out of me, so I changed mine to a classic phone ring. As in the type of bell you hear on the old rotary phones. As to text/email notifications, they're default iPhone sounds. I have a friend who's an actress who calls me a lot, and I set up her ring tone as the Entertainer. For my sister, who's a fucking bitch, I set it to the Imperial March from Star Wars. I was home with the folks and she called my cel, and my parents both turned and looked at me, recognized the song, then heard me say "heya Melissa... what's up?", and they laughed their asses off. I also have a few phone spammers that call every now and then so I've set them up with a ringtone of silence.
Text ringtone is just the iPhone tone. I do, however, have several ringtones, with different ones for different people. The default ring at the moment is the theme from the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. My wife's ringtone is "Stellar" by Incubus, and when my home phone calls me (again, always my wife) it is "Seven" by Dave Matthews Band. "Alcohol" by Barenaked Ladies plays when my drunken party-boy of a little brother calls, and I also have it set to repeat the "She fuckin hates me" line from "She Hates Me" by Puddle of Mudd whenever my mother-in-law calls my cell. I have a few Foo Fighters songs on there too, but I don't really use those, they were just free downloads for something or other. Alt Focus: I haven't changed them in a while, mostly because I have different ring tones for different people, so it just sort of works. If I find a good song for a person, I'll add it. As an alt. alt. focus, I had a job as a social worker, and I was "on call" 24-7. This meant I could get a call any time, any day about a client in crisis, or from my boss giving me shit about paperwork. Week days, that thing would go off constantly from the school I worked at, my boss, clients' parents (the few I gave the cell number too, as we weren't obligated to give it to clients, they could call the hospital), and even the police. I even got a call on Easter Sunday while IN church because of a crisis. I grew to loathe that phone and it's ring tone. God forbid I be sick, as I spent at least 3 hours on the phone arranging various shit to cover my ass in my absence.
This is the ringtone for a female friend that I'm particularly close to. We both share a deep love of Dilla. A large part of our conversations end in debates. "You're right" never sounds as good as when she says it. This is the ringtone for the rest of my very close friends (Starting at the 2:11 mark, I tried to link to that particular part of the video, but I apparently I can't or I'm too dense to figure it out.) This is my general ringtone for pretty much everybody. I just got an HTC Incredible II and I'm trying to figure out how to get my old ringtones from my LG Voyager to my new phone. I can't stand the standard ringtones and alerts that came with this phone...but I'm still struggling with learning how to use it. EDIT: I'm also on call this week til Sunday at 12AM. I work in a dorm on campus in exchange for rent. I don't pay my rent with money, but with pieces of my soul. It's not as bad as being on call for the Counseling Center, but I have ended up doing suicide interventions as an RA.
My ringer is on next to never. When it is, my general ringer is this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O_3RjbBvEQ I really only give my actual phone number to people that I might actually want to talk to. Others get my Google Voice number which is whitelisted for people I want to talk to, everyone else goes to VM. Sad to say, a job I had in the past gave you a phone and a pager (circa 1999 or so). I had a phone and pager personally. For this job, when you were on call, you got the on-call phone and pager. So, when I was on call, I just carried around a bag of phones/pagers. It was a challenge to find the right phone in the middle of the night.
I just got a new phone which I haven't cared enough to really personalize yet. In the past, I've usually just left it on vibrate and saved myself the trouble of listening to it, since I find the sound much more distracting than the buzz. I'll usually have to answer anyway, but it feels as if those few seconds of concentration are important. When I have had it on loud, my ringtones have been either a song sample with an electric mandolin solo, or a piece from this little tune:
This is my call ringtone: This is my text ringtone: My phone cannot get any new ringtones and I hate the ones that come with the phone more than these two.
I'm still pissed that the modern iPhones are incapable (without jailbraking) of doing something that my previous phone that was running Windows Mobile 6 had no trouble with: custom ringtones. I used to have this: http://www.retrostatic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73+ (Transformer's transformation sound effect) buzz out whenever a text came in. I've been rocking this as my default ringtone for a while now: Cee-Lo for if the ex calls, Todd Rundgren's "Bang on the Drum All Day" for coworkers, and Trololo for my roommate because he hates that song.
Yes you can, I have an iPhone and both the ringtone and texttone are custom and the phone isn't jailbroken. Check it son
Ringtones are ridiculous, especially in a work environment. For every one occasion when a ringtone is totally awesome to have, there are 10 when you look like a complete fucking idiot. The odds are against you. I haven't had my cell phone on anything besides vibrate in over 10 years.
My mistake; I meant to say custom text-alerts, not ringtones. How in the heck were you able to put a custom texttone on there without jailbraking? The procedure that I use for ringtones doesn't work in the slightest. Not even on weekends? Or evenings? Or the other 128 hours per week that you aren't at work?
100% spot on. The only times I've had my phone off vibrate since I've had it are when I'm crashing on someone's couch and need to use it as an alarm in the morning. Other than that, it's in my pocket pretty much constantly. The only downside is trying to find it if I've misplaced it in someone's house. That usually takes a while.
Jumping on the Nick bandwagon here, ringtones can either make you look normal or like an idiot. There is almost no chance you are going to impress someone with a ring tone, and if you do, that person is not worth impressing. Another benefit to keeping your phone on vibrate: you look like much less of an asshole if you forget to turn it off/silence it in a meeting, movie, play, etc...
I keep mine on vibrate because I can't hear the ring half the time in my pocket, there's nothing more annoying than the ring of a cell phone, and usually ends up giving me a boner.
My policy holds true for all 168 hours of the week. Not looking like a retard is one of my favorite things to do, both at work, and during my free time. 90% of the time, I have my cell phone in my pocket. Vibration is a sufficient method of notification. At night, when I go to bed, I don't want to talk to anybody anyways. Not even my wife, and she sleeps 6 inches away from me.