• UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    6 months ago

    I don’t get it. Don’t we do that now as well? Putting .mp3 files up as our ringtones?

    • ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      51
      ·
      6 months ago

      (back creaks) In the old days, some phones had a specific audio format for ringtones that wasn’t .mp3 to save storage space.

      • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        6 months ago

        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?

        • Damage@slrpnk.net
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          6 months ago

          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.

          • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            6 months ago

            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?

            • Damage@slrpnk.net
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              6 months ago

              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.

            • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              6 months ago

              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”

      • BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        6 months ago

        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.

    • GFGJewbacca@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      6 months ago

      Oh my sweet summer child. Ringtones were in a different audio format than mp3s. Plus, getting the ringtone onto the phone required additional fuckery.

      • gregorum@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        6 months ago

        additional fuckery

        Oh, wow, that phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting here…

        • Album@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          6 months ago

          Phones didn’t have UFS/USB storage like today. So usually you were using a proprietary cable and software to move files over.

          • gregorum@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            6 months ago

            That’s what I’m saying. “Additional fuckery” is really putting it mildly compared to what we all really had to go through.

        • Encom@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          6 months ago

          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?

    • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      6 months ago

      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