My first mobile phone was a People’s Phone PP800, and it was brilliant. Its 1996 styling, even by today’s standards, is still quite modern and it exists today, even though it no longer works. My children use it to bash each other about the head with.
Back in 1996, when Vodafone purchased People’s Phone for £77m as they strengthened their grip on the mobile phone market, text messaging wasn’t a thought-about form of communication and, in the event that you had a friend who actually knew your mobile number, all it emitted was a shrill, electronic ringing sound.
Since then, of course, the mobile phone market has bloomed and the PP800 shares about as much DNA with 
the Sony Ericsson W980 that I use today as a BBC Micro does with the laptop I’m using to write this blog on and, naturally, companies have made a fortune from offering add-on services to meet the needs of every user’s mobile perversions.
Standard ringtones gave way to polyphone ringtones which, in turn, gave way to phones that allow you to use MP3 music as your call alert of choice. That, unfortunately, gave rise to the Crazy Frog and yesterday a customer’s phone rang in the bar, blaring out Lily Allen’s “F*** You!”
Now, I’m not going to say I haven’t fallen foul of the odd jokey ringtone myself – I have! My phone used to play the theme to Star Wars, sound like a Ferrari Formula One car and, my personal favourite, whenever a text message arrived it was known to speak like Homer Simpson and say “ooh, the mail’s arrived!”
Some of it was because I found it amusing, and some of it was because I worked in an office with thirty other people and the only way to guarantee it was your phone that was ringing was to put a stupid ringtone on it. Unfortunately, that just led to a cacophony of polyphonic noise, most sounding like Kevin “Bloody” Wilson or that damned infernal frog.
Today, I don’t work in an office and find amusing ringtones irritating. I just want my phone to go ‘ring-ring’; retro, I know. Unfortunately, however, the W980 that I use, despite being fitted with the latest Sony Walkman MP3 player and 8gb of space to put whatever noise on it I want, doesn’t have a standard ringtone that sounds like an ordinary phone. Or even a shrill version much like my old PP800.
Instead, it comes pre-loaded with a choice of musical tones, all of which serve to do nothing other than make me miss a call while I try to figure out what that stupid noise is.
Why can’t a manufacturer just put a normal ringtone on the phone for those of us who are turning into cantankerous old gits? I’ve tried visiting the Sony Ericsson ringtone section, but there’s no default sound on there other than their company warble. A site called Jamster wants to charge me £4.50 A WEEK for one tone and on there the closest I can get to a ringing sound is the voice of somebody who’s just inhaled helium saying “Ring Ring!” (I’ll admit it did make me smile.)
All I want is for my phone to ring like a phone should ring. In these days of the Internet and access to just about anything you want, is that too much to ask?
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This blog can also be found at http://blog.markjdaniels.com/
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