I get a kick out of messing around with ringtones. Like pairing your boarding kennel with “Hound Dog” and your investment manager with “Gold Digger”. Or setting the ringer for your younger brother to be a blaring alarm noise.

My Centro lets me work out my evil ringtone tendencies better than any phone I’ve ever had, but it still has a few limitations. The biggest is that the built-in ringtone manager can’t handle music on the storage card, which puts a strict limit on how many different ringtones you can use. Also, like a lot of the standard Palm applications, it leaves something to be desired in the looks department.

Ringo is a ringtone manager designed to give you more control over your ringers in an easy-to-use interface. Read on to see if it measures up!

Ringo allows you to set personalized call tones, SMS tones, and pictures for individuals and groups of callers. It can use music from anywhere on your device, and it comes with several dozen free downloadable ringtones to get you going. A 7-day trial is available to check all this out.

Tones

Ringo is divided into three sections, each with a handy tab at the bottom: Tones, Contacts, and Groups. Tones is a quick way to set your defaults, and it’s your link to the online Ringo tone catalog.

The defaults that you dug through three layers of menus in Preferences to set are automatically detected, and now they don’t require virtual surgery to change. My favorite touch is allowing you to set a default caller ID picture as well.

Picture selection goes through the built-in Pics & Videos interface, but tones get a special menu. Ringo can use any mp3 file as a ringtone.

Tapping the ringtone “Pick” button brings up a selector, which works the same for defaults, individuals, and groups. Since you have to choose where to look for a ringtone, Ringo is a little more work than the built-in manager. However, in return for an extra tap you get the ability to use ringtones stored on the card including full songs. In my book, that’s not a bad deal.

Notice that you can also set the ringtone as “silent.” This means you can comfortably ignore an individual (like your last blind date) or a group (like your ex-girlfriends) while letting all your other calls get your attention. You’ve even got a excuse: “I didn’t hear it ring!”

Volume depends on the system settings, and there is no way to control vibrate through Ringo.

Contacts

The first time you use Ringo, the Contacts screen greets you with a slightly scary blank page. I had expected to see all the contacts from my address book, but then I realized that if I wasn’t going to customize all of them individually, I really didn’t need them in Ringo. To make life easier, Ringo can find the contacts you already have custom ringtones for and import them.

Outside of the import feature, contacts must be added one at a time. That’s not even one name at a time; it’s one number at a time. Yes, this means you can set separate ringtones for home and cell without creating another Contacts entry in your address book, but it also means it takes that much longer to get everything into Ringo. I would like to see a multi-select feature added to speed up this process.

Once a contact number is added, only the name is shown. If I add Doug’s home and cell, I would have two entries labeled “Doug Goldring.” Although I can edit the name in Ringo Contacts, Ringo could make things a lot easier if it automatically added the appropriate (M), (H), etc. label that Palm’s contact application uses to indicate which number is what.

Groups

Groups is a killer feature I didn’t know I was missing. Ringo imports the categories from the Palm contact application and allows you to customize the ringtones for each. Groups helps you tell instantly if you’re getting a call from the doctor’s office, a potential employer, or a telemarketer.

Even without a way to edit the members or assign pictures, this is still an incredibly useful tool. I am crossing my fingers that those features find their way into a future version of Ringo.

Tones Catalog

The “Get Tones” button from the Tones page and the “Download Ringtones…” item in the tone picker link to Ringo’s tone download page. There are more than 50 free downloads in general and theme categories (I love the sheer randomness of a special section for Doctor Who). Some are horribly cheesy, like “Please Pick Up the Phone Now” to the tune of “Everybody Dance Now,” but some are pretty decent for non-official-artist tunes.

Although Ringo says they are MP3 ringtones, they downloaded to my Centro as .rng files, and I had to change the extensions with a file explorer before they would play.

If you don’t already have an mp3 you like somewhere on your device, Ringo has a limited create-your-own recorder, or you can use services like Myxer, Make Own Ringtone, or Minitones to cut songs into ringtones.

Interface

Ringo’s cheerful colors and big buttons stick to the idea that ringtones are fun, and setting them should be too. Overall the program looks great visually. The main Ringo interface is easy to navigate with a finger and makes good use of the Centro’s touchscreen.

However, some parts of the program are easiest to get through using the d-pad, and I was surprised at the lack of d-pad support for the Ringo tabs or buttons — I could move between and select things, but I didn’t know what I was selecting until I did it. I had to keep regripping my Centro to switch between finger and d-pad. Some highlighting for the active button would help.

Conclusion

Despite a few minor problems, Ringo scores as a great way to do more with your ringtones. It packs some fantastic features, but its simplicity and sense of fun make Ringo rock.

What I liked:

• fun interface
• using mp3s on storage card
• customized ringtones for groups

What’s on my wishlist:

• more streamlined addition of contacts
• pictures for Groups
• improved d-pad navigation

Vital Stats

Ringo costs $29.95 and, in addition to Palm OS, is available for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile smartphone, and Windows Mobile Pocket PC. You can buy it from Ringo’s site or the JAMM Store.

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3. Review: Ringo
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5. Ringo Mobile – WM6 Support, New Features and a JAMM Store Discount!