Your Cell Phone

What are Cell Phones?

Cell phones, also known as mobile phones or wireless phones, are hand-held phones with built-in antennas. Unlike home phones, cell phones can be carried from place to place with a minimum of fuss. This makes them a good choice for people who want to be in touch with other people even when they are away from the house.

How Do Cell Phones Work?

Not many people know it, but cell phones are actually two-way radios, much like the walkie-talkies of the past, albeit much more advanced. When you talk into your cell phone receiver, it registers your voice and converts the sound into radio waves. These waves travel through the air until they reach a receiver, which is usually found at a base station. This station will then send your call through a telephone network until it contacts the person you wish to speak with. Similarly, when someone places a call to your cell phone, the signal travels through the telephone network until it reaches a station near you. The station sends the radio waves out into the neighboring areas. These radio waves are then picked up by your cell phone and converted into the sound of a human voice.

Cell phones are a vast improvement over the telecommunications technology of the past, and are daily becoming a fixture of modern life. As always, communication is vital, and cell phones will help you to better communicate with the key people in your life. Using a cell phone is one of the first steps you must take to participate effectively in the emerging global economy.

If credit cards have supplementary cardholders who can share the credit limit, cellular phone plans also offer shared plans more commonly known as family plans. This type of plan offers the sweet promise of value for money for as small an amount as $10 to $20 more per month that a single subscriber is used to shell out.

The value lies in providing two lines of cellular service combined with the newest cellular phone deals usually offered for free. Other freebies include cellular phone accessories such as belt clip, hands free headset, in-car chargers and more. Cash back rebate incentive programs are also offered. Since these usually have to be claimed by a specific date, it is always advised to review the rebate information.

Basically, the allotted minute allowances are shared between the subscribers. However, modifications on this notion have been introduced by companies. This is the reason why it is important to read the details of the family plans offered very carefully.

There are five leading cellular companies that offer family plans, namely, Verizon’s Family Share, Cingular’s FamilyTalk, Sprint’s PCS Family, T-Mobile’s Family Time and Nextel’s Team Share.

Verizon has the unlimited Night and Weekend home airtime minutes when calling a cellular phone that is also on the Verizon Wireless Network. Night hours start at 9:01 PM to 5:59 AM on Weekdays. On Weekends, it starts at 12:00AM Saturday to 11:59PM Sunday.

Cingular offers Rollover Minutes. This refers to the buildup of unused minutes which can be used on the following months. This expires after a year. This is a great deal because it is often difficult to track the number of minutes consumed in a month. Rollover minutes will certainly maximize the value of money spent because the unused time can still be consumed within a year.

Sprint has the capability to take advantage of its nationwide fiber optic network through the PCS Fair & Flexible America. Long distance calls are free when the calls are made on its nationwide PCS network. It is always a drawback on the budget to incur long distance charges. This offer is very convenient for business people who are always traveling.

T-Mobile has the Nationwide Digital Roaming. This prevents the consumer from obtaining expensive roaming charges on calls within its national coverage network. Calls between T-Mobile to T-Mobile have unlimited minutes and doesn’t consume the family monthly allotted minutes. This is a very sweet offer because on top of the monthly minutes that can be made on calls on other networks, one can certainly take advantage of the unlimited minutes for calls that need more time for idle talk without being pressured to cut talk time because of expenses.

Nextel also offers Free Nights and Weekends. This corresponds to Mondays to Fridays at 9:00 PM to 6:59 AM and Fridays at 9:00 PM until Monday at 6:59 AM. The Group Connect service links a group of up to 25 people on a single call without consuming the allotted cellular allowance for the month. This is similar to having a conference real-time without expending the allotted time.

It is always wise to review the details of the plans offered by such companies before availing of one. The only setback of such plans, especially those that offer rebates and free cellular units, is that one may be tied up to a year or two contracts which are difficult to disregard as easily.

Most communication devices like the telephone create a “sound” known as ringtone. This denotes an incoming call.

With the progress communication technology, ringtones are fast developing from the simplest to the best form that you could get.

Primitive ringtones were known as monophonic tones or monotones. These types of ringtones have very simple sounds. They have single musical line.

Tones like these are usually programmed in the mobile phone. In some instances, the phone has a “built-in composer” to create clear-cut sounds. The composed tone can be sent through short message service also known as “SMS text.”

Along came Polyphonic

A polyphonic tone or a polytone has much better sound quality than the monotone. It includes two or more notes such as the sound of piano, drums, flute and a lot more. This sounds more lifelike and can be easily downloaded to a mobile phone.

Some networks made a lot of money by making these tones readily available and easy to download. There is no need for you to compose one. This can also be sent through SMS text. These tones are advertised on web sites, newspapers, radio and television.

And Now Comes the Real Thing

A true tone comprises the real sound of a song. It has all the sound of the instruments and voice. Basically, it captures the entire song.

To program its real sound, “pulse code modulation” is used. The same thing is employed in creating compact discs. It is contained in MP3, Windows media audio, wave and many more. These can easily become a ringtone. This can be downloaded from the Internet and mobile phone networks.

More and more people are becoming addicted to downloading these tones because the process is a breeze. The tones are segregated by genre, artist, title of song and album. A lot of these tones can be downloaded for free and depending on the features of the phone, the tones length can be edited. If you only want the chorus part you can have it.

Personalized Stuff

Depending on the cell phones capabilities, most has recording feature. You can record the sound of your own voice, your kids singing, and the sweet nothings of your loved ones and set it as your ringtone or even set it as your alarm clock tone.

Third Generation Mobile Phones

The features of mobile phones are getting better and the 3G or third generation phone is the proof. It gives better and more realistic sound to ringtones.

Many cellular phones nowadays are capable of holding a couple to a hundred, and even to a thousand, of these tones. These phones have memory cards that can be changed. The memory capacities are from 64 kilobyte, 256 kilobyte, 512 kilobyte and up to 1 and 4 gigabyte.

An Album of Ringtones

The usual album of an artist contains songs sang by the artist himself or done in a duet but now you can make customized ring tones on them. Artist Juvenile releases his album entitled reality check. Now fans can enjoy his music in a different level. His songs in the album can be modified and easily make his songs your ring tone. Some even release albums with polyphonic tones.

Ringtone downloading activities are becoming a fad because of the realistic sound that they bring and their easy accessibility. Technology will not stop here and it will get better than what you could imagine.