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YOU CAN RING MY BELL

Enter Vito RingtoneEditor which features:

• 
  Ability to easily create ringtones
• 
  Create ringtones from .MP3, .wav and .ogg sound
  files

SO SIMPLE EVEN A PalmOS USER CAN DO IT

When I mentioned above that this program give you
the ability to easily create a ringtone, I was not
kidding.  You can literally create a ringtone
with 5 taps of your stylus.

Figure
1:

TAP 1 – tap on RingtoneEditor from within your Start
Menu.

Figure
2: TAP 2 – select the sound file you want to use. 

I thought the beginning piano solo from Billy Joel’s
"Angry Young Man" would make a great ringtone and chose
that as the file.  The file will start playing
immediately – a little to immediately as explained in
the next step.

Figure
3: TAP 3 – press the "START ringtone" button or press
the left soft key at the point in the sound file you
would like to start the ringtone. 

Like I said, the
file starts playing immediately and before you can tap
"START ringtone."  This makes it impossible to capture a
sound file from the very beginning.  Considering
that I wanted to capture the beginning of the song, I
was out of luck and had to record a later part of it.

Figure
4: TAP 4 – press the "FINISH ringtone" button or press
the left softkey at the point in the sound file you
would like to end the ringtone.

Figure
5: TAP 5 – press the "Save ringtone" or "Assign as
ringtone" button. 

I assumed that "Assign as
ringtone" meant that the program would create the
ringtone and then assign it as the ringer. 
Apparently, I was wrong as you will see in a bit. 
Re-edit takes you back to the "START ringtone" screen.

Figure
6: RingtoneEditor will automatically begin converting
the ringtone file. 

Since I began with an .MP3
file, I am not exactly sure what it was "converting"
especially since the output ringtone is also an .MP3
file.  When it is complete, the program
automatically closes abruptly without any type of
confirmation that everything was completed correctly.

Figure
7: When complete, the ringtone will appear in the
WindowsRings folder on your Pocket PC. 

Ringtone
files are named "ringtone_<song title>".  As I
mentioned, RingtoneEditor saves the file as an .MP3.

Figure
8: I said you could CREATE a ringtone in 5 easy
taps…but I didn’t say you were finished.

The option, "Assign as ringtone" did not actually assign
the ringtone to either the "Phone: Known Caller" or the
"Phone: Unknown Caller" events on my Treo 700w.

Figure
9: The new ringtone is, however available from the drop
down list. 

I’m not sure if the failure to
automatically assign the ringtone is unique to the Treo
700w or if it is a bug in the program.

OPTIONS?  WHO NEEDS OPTIONS?
Vito also keeps the
options down to a minimum.

Figure
10:
The only option is to change the language between
English, German and Russian.  That’s it.

I wish an
option to delay the start of the sound file by a few seconds would have
been included.  Another wish… a simple sound editor to allow you
to adjust the start and end points of the recording.  It is very
difficult to start and finish the recording at exactly the right moments.

PURCHASING

You can purchase Vito Ringtone Editor for $9.99. There is a 14-day trial, available here.

PROS

• 
  
  Very easy to use
• 
  
  Allows conversion of .ogg files into ringtones
• 
  
  Places the ringtones in the correct directory

CONS

• 
  
  Cannot delay the start of sound file to capture the
  very beginning of a song
• 
  
  Does not automatically assign the newly created
  ringtone to phone call events (at least on my Treo
  700w)
• 
  
  Conversion process is slow and should not be needed
  if the original file is an .MP3

OVERALL
IMPRESSION

You have to like an application that is so easy to
use and focused on a specific task.  Overall, I
appreciate what the application is trying to
accomplish.  The real problem here is that
if you already have the sound file you want to use
in .MP3 or .wav format, there is no real reason to
use Vito RingtoneEditor.  You can simply drop
the .MP3 or .wav file into the Windows/Rings
directory on your Pocket PC and you will be able to
assign them to the phone events.  The only two unique things that RingtoneEditor does is convert .ogg files and allow
you to choose specific parts of a sound file to use
as a ringtone instead of the whole file. 
Whether or not that is worth $9.99 is up to you. 
I think this application is aimed squarely at
non-techies and beginners who would not have a clue
as to how they can add ringtones to their Windows
Mobile phone.  For that audience, the program
hits the mark.  Power and experienced users can
do this themselves. That said, I give this program the following score: