Long gone are the days when incoming calls were indicated only by mechanical bell ringing or annoying warbling electronic sounds. The portable cellular phones of today are essentially mini computers and they are able to utilize a portion of that processing power to generate interesting and attention grabbing ringtones. Cell phone ringtones have come a long way, and modern phones are capable of producing full spectrum digital sound.

Monophonic ringtones were the first ringtone technology to be universally available on cellular phones. While more realistic cell phone audio technologies have recently become available, monophonic ringtones are still popular due to their relative simplicity and wide availability. This article will discuss several ways to load and create your own monophonic ringtones.

Monophonic ringtones are simply sequences of individual notes played successively; only two values are required to completely specify the tone--the frequency (or pitch) and the duration. A number of simple languages have been developed to describe monophonic ringtones. Probably the most popular of the monophonic ringtones description languages is Ringing Tone Text Transfer Language (RTTTL) developed by Nokia.

You can compose your own monophonic ringtones or download them for free or for a fee from the internet. Regardless of how you obtain your monophonic ringtones, they need to be loaded into your phone. There are three basic ways to load monophonic ringtones, though the exact method will vary by phone. Be sure to consult your phone's documentation for the exact procedures. Some phones allow you to load tones using a data cable or infrared link. Some cell phones can load monophonic ringtones that are sent via Short Message Service (SMS) messaging. A simple but laborious way to load monophonic ringtones is to key them in directly if the phone features some sort of composer service.

Monophonic ringtones are still popular despite their simplicity when compared with some of the other ringtone technologies available. Their ease of use and almost universal availability make monophonic ringtones a popular choice for many cellular phone users.

Ringtones are available for download from a wide variety of online web sites and are typically free or, more usually, available for a small fee.