Section 2 of 5
Handsets
The phones that carried the tones — from the Nokia 3310's Composer key to the Razr V3's clamshell, named and dated.
- Nokia 3310: The Phone You Wrote Music OnThe Nokia 3310's Composer feature (2000) and the RTTTL text format that let people key in melodies and share them as SMS strings, establishing how the phone became the first mass instrument for amateur ringtone authorship.
- Razr V3: When the Phone Became the ObjectThe Motorola Razr V3's 2004 release — its design specification, its cultural moment as a fashion object, and how its speaker and audio chipset sat in the shift from polyphonic to truetone.
- W800: Sony Ericsson Puts a Walkman in the Ringtone EraThe Sony Ericsson W800's launch as a music-first handset — its orange earbuds, its AAC support and how it positioned audio quality as a handset selling point in 2005.
- BlackBerry 7290 and the Ringtone Nobody NoticedHow BlackBerry's default tones were designed for corporate contexts — quiet, professional, discreet — and what that tells us about ringtone as social signal rather than entertainment.
- The Sidekick and the Market That Bought the Most TonesThe T-Mobile Sidekick as the handset most associated with the teenage ringtone-buying demographic in the mid-2000s, and how that demographic was also the primary target of subscription-trap marketing.
- iPhone, 2007: A Ringtone Maker Arrives, and a Market EndsThe first iPhone's launch ringtone set — Marimba, Xylophone, Opening — and the iTunes ringtone-maker feature at its launch price, as the documented turning point after which the paid-ringtone market began its measured decline.
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