Geekery: My Ringtone Came From WHERE!?
Those alerts noises your devices make aren’t random – they’re designed with care.
The Nokia ring tone is permanently etched into some of our brains. It is an excerpt of a song composed over 100 years ago – ‘Gran Vals’ by Francisco Tárrega. You can hear it at around 2:28, but I recommend listening to the entire song for maximum effect (and because it’s a nice piece of music).
Nokia purchased the rights in 1992 for an advertisement for the Nokia 1011. When melodic monophonic tones became technologically possible Nokia revisited the song, and installed it on the (now classic) Nokia 2110 in 1994. It’s been revamped for different generations of Nokia phones over the years as both a ringtone and a startup alert…
I’m not sorry for getting that stuck in your head – let’s be honest, it’s been there since at least 2005 anyway.
If you want to delve deeper into all of this I highly recommend this article from The Verge – it focuses on the redesign of the sound set for Skype, but pulls in a lot of details about other iconic sounds from tech companies.
What is your favorite default ringtone, start up sound, or alert noise?
