Section 1 of 5
Gran Vals
Francisco Tárrega's 1902 guitar piece, four bars of it, and how those bars shipped inside the Nokia 2110 in 1994 and then never left.
- Four Bars Tárrega Never Meant to Go AnywhereThe precise passage in Francisco Tárrega's 1902 guitar piece Gran Vals that became the Nokia tune, establishing what the piece is and why those four bars were chosen.
- Nokia 2110: The Phone That Shipped the TuneThe Nokia 2110's 1994 release as the first handset to carry the Nokia tune as a default ring, with the technical fact of how a monophonic tone was stored and played.
- When Nokia Asked the World to Rewrite ItNokia's 2011 open competition to remake the Nokia tune, documenting who entered, what the brief was and what the company chose.
- Marimba: The Tune That Inherited the ThroneHow the iPhone's default tone Marimba — composed by Apple, shipped in 2007 — filled the cultural space the Nokia tune had occupied, and why no single default has held that position since.
- Hello Moto and the Voice That Sold a Brand'Hello Moto' as a spoken-word ringtone and brand device — when Motorola introduced it, which handsets carried it, and what it represented in the competition between default tones as brand identity.
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