A long, long time ago, polyphonic ringtones were a noteworthy feature. Years later, the iPhone ringtone (Marimba) became instantly recognizable. Before that it was the Nokia Tune. Even to this day smartphone makers put a lot of effort into making ringtones – e.g. Samsung rented out a concert hall to add Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons for One UI 8.
But do people still leave their ringer on? Do you? Speaking of Apple, it recently removed the Ring/Silent switch, which was present even on the very first iPhone. It replaced it with an Action Button and Camera Control. Similarly, OnePlus axed its Alert Slider.
Goodbye, Alert Slider
All of this suggests that people set up their phone one way and leave it that way – no need to silence the ringer for class or a meeting if it’s already on silent, right? You may as well have a shortcut key instead.
Additionally, the rise in popularity of smartwatches and bands means that you don’t need the phone to make noise – a wearable buzzing on your wrist is more than enough.
What do you do with your phone – do you have the ringer on all the time, off all the time, do you switch manually or do you do something else? If you have an interesting or unusual setup, let us know in the comments.
And while we’re at it, if you do use the ringer, have you picked out a custom ringtone or do you just use one of the ringtones that came with the phone? Maybe even the default ringtone?