Posted in: Mobile software

Windows Phone 7 will support custom ringtones, people around the world rejoice

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Microsoft has announced the custom ringtones are coming to Windows Phone 7 with the highly anticipated Mango update. And no you haven’t traveled back in time, it’s just that some modern platforms (like iOS and WP7) have been particularly stubborn to allow custom ringtones.

And not only is Windows Phone the only platform slower tha iOS to get the feature, but it will also have restrictions as puzzling as those on the platform that started the touch-revolution. Even the sync process.

The ringtone file restrictions are quite similar to what Apple has on iOS – 39 seconds or shorter, 1MB or less size, DRM free and MP3/WMA.

Now that may sound reasonable for some, but Microsoft even kept the same sync process for the ringtones – except that you use Zune and not iTunes. So you must create a ringtone to match those requirements, put it in your Zune library and explicitly mark it as a ringtone.

Microsoft expects lots of ringtone making apps to appear in the first few weeks after the Mango update is out. I hope the tunes created with them will not require a connection to Zune, but who knows.

It’s really good to see that your mobile OS is getting new features, but it’s sad that Apple turned the custom ringtones into a premium feature and Microsoft took the same road.

Here you can find more details about the upcoming Mango update.

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