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I don't get it. Don't we do that now as well? Putting .mp3 files up as our ringtones?
(back creaks) In the old days, some phones had a specific audio format for ringtones that wasn't .mp3 to save storage space.
Are we talking about the button phones? Did they have different audio formats cuz their speakers were crappy or something (hence, no use playing high resolution audio)? Did the custom ringtones then sound bad as well?
button phones
Oh god this is the phrase that makes every bone in my body cry out in old.
Sssssshhh, there there, it's ok. They're feature phones
Old dumb phones could not play arbitrary audio... Well, aside from phone calls of course. Ringtones were a series of... Tones! Kinda like a midi file, ever heard of that?
Extra fun fact, the original iPhone only had THE iphone ringtone, and you could not change it.
Old dumb phones could not play arbitrary audio... Well, aside from phone calls of course. Ringtones were a series of... Tones! Kinda like a midi file, ever heard of that?
Oh, was this because of limited processing power / slow secondary storage read speeds?
Extra fun fact, the original iPhone only had THE iphone ringtone, and you could not change it
NO WAY.... Oof that must've been so annoying, no? Ur phone being a waking advertisement to everyone around you?
Oh, was this because of limited processing power / slow secondary storage read speeds?
That and we hadn't settled on standards nearly to the degree we have now. Much like charging cables it was the wild West for some shit out there. Also, many phones actually did support MIDI, but most normal users didn't know what to do with it lol
Oof that must've been so annoying, no? Ur phone being a waking advertisement to everyone around you?
Back then it was status. "Look at me, I have an IPHOOOOONEEEEE"
Oh, was this because of limited processing power / slow secondary storage read speeds?
All of that and more. They didn't have mass memory, so you had a maximum number of contacts, a maximum number of SMS, a maximum number of ringtones.. but you couldn't delete ringtones to make room for SMSses or such. They were a completely different tech.
NO WAY.... Oof that must've been so annoying, no? Ur phone being a waking advertisement to everyone around you?
They loved it. Also it couldn't share media (messaging apps didn't exist yet and it didn't support MMS) and was GSM only, so to actually do anything smart it had to be connected to WiFi.
Low quality speakers and storage was far more expensive then than it is now
the button phones
Reee kids get out
I still have some 3gp/3gpp videos recorded on my old slide. What a pain. And I think depending on whether your phone was gsm/CDMA would affect whether it recorded to .3gp or .3g2.
Oh my sweet summer child. Ringtones were in a different audio format than mp3s. Plus, getting the ringtone onto the phone required additional fuckery.
additional fuckery
Oh, wow, that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting here…
Phones didn't have UFS/USB storage like today. So usually you were using a proprietary cable and software to move files over.
That’s what I’m saying. “Additional fuckery” is really putting it mildly compared to what we all really had to go through.
Oof. May I ask which audio format it was? Or was it different for different phones?
every phone had a different format, i remember the Razr had a deprecated tool to convert .mp3 to a format it could read and limited it to like…30sec audio snippets?
Well first of all who actually has their ringer on anymore
And secondly it was WAY more of a pain in the ass back then