Nokia Commissions Orchestra to Develop Melodic Ringtones

You might find this hard to believe (we certainly do), but obnoxious ringtones aren't the only ones that exist. If a study by Nokia is to be believed, classical music ringtones are actually the second most popular, followed by who-knows-what. It doesn't matter what came in third or fourth or fifth -- the point is, lots of mobile users enjoy the sound of classical music when their phones start ringing, so Nokia went out and hired an orchestra to give them what they want.

A few of the recordings are available now on Lumia 820 and 920 smartphones (the latter of which we recently reviewed), and they'll be available on upcoming models, The Telegraph reports. There will be 25 original pieces, or "miniatures," when all is said and done, all of which were composed by a handful of in-house sound designers at Nokia.


Nokia also tapped into the talents of Epic Sound, an audio production company that assisted with the arrangement and some of the composing. The goal was to create a series of ringtones that don't sound sound distinctively like ringtones. That's hard to do when you're recording in a studio with synthesizers, which is typically how it's done.

If classical music isn't your cup of tea, there's still Geico's collection of ringtones.