How mobile phones are now becoming nicer to hear, rather than the usual sound like a cat being dragged through a toaster.

Just to let you know, most mobile phones can only play 1 note at a time, and their range of pitch is limited quite a bit. The sounds that they play are either preset ones; typed in, downloaded from the net and on the latest Sony handsets, recorded with a microphone.

Sony had this brilliant idea that you can record your own ring tone using the microphone on your mobile, but no other companies took on this idea, and not many people have one of these new Sony phones. So this idea has fallen out of use.

However, a new idea has come about called polyphonic ringtones. It allows 16 different notes of a much large scale of notes to be played at the same time, alowing a more pleasent noise to be created for your personal ringtone.

Creating one of these ringtones can take up to an hour for the best ones, as it is more like creating a symphony on a phone, rather than a small tune.

This 16 channel system alows many things, including a bass rythem, drum beat or different "instruments" to be playing at the same time.
Currently only a few mobile phones offer this new polyphonic system, including the new Nokia 7210.

I personally think, just skip the whole system and have a large shock ray, that will alert you when somebody is called you, but thats just me.