The first ever programmable ringtones were the monophonic ringtones, which although technologically advanced at the time, were able only to reproduce sounds using one single note at a time. Later models included the next step in ringtone technology, the groundbraking polyphonic ringtone, which allowed multiple notes to be played together. Now most mid to high level cell phones are shipping with truetone ringtones, the most realistic ringtone available on the market today. Truetone ringtones are simply not generated like other ringtone types, but rather are actual recorded sound.

Truetone ringtones utilize a number of digital encoding technologies to store their sound information. The most basic format for truetone ringtones is WAV, which is uncompressed waveform data. Truetone ringtones in WAV format have outstanding sound quality but, since they are uncompressed, they take up a lot of disc space. Various compression technologies can be used to reduce the size of truetone ringtones and, if the proper parameters are chosen when compressing, can sound almost identical to the bulkier WAV truetone ringtones. Some of the available compression options for truetone ringtones are OGG (an open source compression format which is favored on Linux based PDAs and phones), Windows Media, and, probably the most popular and widely used format, MPEG-3 (more commonly referred to as mp3).

While many truetone ringtones are available for download on the internet for free or for a small charge, you can also create your own from digital media. There are various shareware programs that will let you rip music from CDs, select a sample, and convert it to the format of your choosing. With truetone ringtones, you now have the technology in sound to express yourself like you never have before.