.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Treo’s Ringo ring tone maker isn’t quite a star
.AUTHOR Heather Wardell
.SUMMARY Ringo, by Electric Pocket, is a ring tone manager for your Treo that promises to make assigning ring tones to contacts and groups of contacts quick and easy. Is Ringo a star? Tap here to read the full review.
.OTHER
Ringo, by Electric Pocket, is a ring tone manager for your Treo that promises to make assigning ring tones to contacts and groups of contacts quick and easy. My review focuses primarily on version 4.50; I will touch on changes from the previous version when warranted.
.H1 Creating ring tones
Ringo can use the default ring tones on your Treo, and can obtain additional ring tones in several ways: you can connect to the Internet to download ring tones from your favorite source, a number of tones are available directly from the Electric Pocket Web site, or you can convert any MP3 on your Treo to a ring tone.
To use an MP3, you can import it or just pick it. If you import, the program converts the MP3 to a ring tone and stores it in the Treo’s ring tone library, making it accessible as a ring tone from other applications. If you simply pick the MP3, Ringo can use it but the other applications won’t see it as a ring tone.
.CALLOUT The new version does not have this feature. I was impressed by it, and am disappointed at its removal.
If you want to use a particular song as a ring tone but don’t want to have the MP3 itself on the Treo, creating a ring tone makes sense. Otherwise, since I can’t see any reason to set ring tones in the other applications while using Ringo, I’m not sure why you would choose to make an MP3 into a ring tone.
.TEASER Is Ringo a star? Tap here to read the full review.
One feature I feel is missing from the ring tone functionality is the ability to choose only part of a song. If you import an MP3, Ringo takes the first ten seconds or so of the song and loops it to make the ring tone. Without importing, Ringo plays the song from the beginning, stopping when voice mail kicks in or you answer the phone.
I would much prefer to be able to choose a section myself rather than always have the beginning of the song become the ring tone. As I know of at least one freeware application that provides this functionality, it’s disappointing that Ringo does not.
In addition, I had some difficulty with Ringo not creating a ring tone after I’d chosen the MP3. It didn’t give any error message or indicate that it hadn’t succeeded; it just didn’t create the ring tone. I was using Meat Loaf’s "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" for this. Perhaps the file was simply too large, as Ringo did seem to be able to create ring tones from the other, shorter, MP3s I tried. Nonetheless, Ringo should have informed me that it was having difficulty.
Ringo’s ringomo.com Web site allows you to upload an MP3 and have it converted to a ring tone. The first MP3 I tried didn’t work, although it was smaller than the 5MB limit listed on the site, but the second, smaller, one did. Here again, I got only the first ten seconds of the song when the ring tone was installed on my Treo.
.H1 Ringo’s three views
Ringo has three main views, accessible from the bottom of each screen. In the Ring Tones view, you can set the default ring tone, tone for SMS messages, and picture. These defaults will be used for any contact that hasn’t been specially assigned another tone or picture. Figure A shows the Tones view, in which I’ve assigned the standard Treo ring, a recording of my cat’s purr, and a picture of the cat.
.FIGPAIR A Ringo’s Ring Tones screen lets you set defaults that will be used for all uncategorized calls and messages.
You can play the ring tone you’ve selected from this screen, which is helpful if you’re not sure which one you want. The ring tones and text message tones that I chose were played properly, but I was never able to see the picture when a call came through.
In the earlier version, there was an option to use a voice synthesizer program (accessible from the Electric Pocket web site) to announce the names of your callers. It did work, although I found it difficult to understand the voice. It has been removed from the newest version.
.H1 Contacts view
The second Ringo view shows individual contacts that you have added. If, for example, you want your sister’s calls to have their own ring, but her text messages to have the same sound as everyone else, you would add your sister as a contact, set her ring tone, and leave her SMS messages set to default. Figure B shows this.
.FIGPAIR B The Contacts view, where you can specify details for a particular person’s calls and/or messages.
The earlier version of Ringo allowed me to create multiple ring tones for a given person, by selecting their number in the Contacts database and then setting Ringo to not use the same ring tone for all numbers associated with that contact. This was a useful feature, permitting, for example, different ring tones for calls from your sister’s work and cell numbers. The new version does not have this feature. I’d been impressed by it, and am disappointed at its removal.
There is a menu item on the Contacts screen called "Import Contacts". When I select this menu item, nothing happens. The "Sort Contacts" menu item sorts contacts appropriately.
.H1 Groups view
In the Treo’s Contacts application, contacts can be categorized. Ringo allows you to set a ring tone, SMS message tone, and picture for each category in your Contacts application. In addition, you can set these things for all unknown numbers, so that you can tell immediately that a particular call is coming from someone you don’t know.
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I’d originally assumed that I could create groups myself in Ringo, but that is not the case. Ringo draws its groups from the categories in the Contact application.
.H1 Overall
Ringo consistently played the correct ring tone for each test call I made to my Treo, and being able to set ring tones all in one place rather than on each individual contact in the Contacts application is definitely a plus.
However, Ringo has a ways to go before it is a completely solid product. Having to use the beginning of an MP3 is frustrating, the menu item that does nothing needs to be repaired, and a few more error/informational messages would be helpful when Ringo is unable to create a ring tone.
Still, with the exception of the loss of functionality from the previous version, Ringo is good at what it does. Ringo’s rating is 3.
.RATING 3
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.H1 Product availability and resources
Learn about [[http://ringomo.com|Ringo]].
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