AnyRing is an iPhone (jailbreak) app that lets you set any song in your library as the default phone or SMS ringtone, right from on the iPhone itself. And I ‘m just going to go ahead and say this app is an instant favorite for me.
I have not reached whatever stage of maturity it is that gets you past being fascinated with ringtones. I still get far too much pleasure out of hearing the opening riff of ‘American Girl ‘, just as one quick example, when I do a quick test call to my iPhone. I ‘m also a lazy sod when it comes to creating ringtones “ despite all the free do-it-yourself methods available, I much prefer apps that just make it easy to do in a few taps.
Up to now, I ‘d only found desktop apps that made it super simple to create new ringtones. AnyRing takes easy ringtones to a new level “ because it lets you create them right on the iPhone itself.
I grabbed AnyRing yesterday “ as soon as I saw it mentioned over at our friend Sebastien ‘s iPhone Download Blog. Thomas has reviewed this app previously for us “ HERE “ and did not have a good experience with it.
Thus far “ after just around a day of usage “ my experience with the app is all good. Here are a few things I ‘ve noted about using it:
— Though the app costs $3.99 to purchase, it offers a 10 day trial “ that ‘s a plus point for it right out of the gate.
— It ‘s extremely easy to use. Basically, find a song you want to use for either phone or SMS default ringtone, tap on it to select it for either purpose, and you ‘re done.
— You can also do a few extra things “ like toggling Loop on/off, adjusting the volume, setting the start and end points in a song to be used in your ringtone, and previewing your new tone within the app. It does not let you set fade-ins or fade-outs.
— The app appears to override (rather than modify) the ringtone setting in the built-in Settings app. This confused me at first because once I ‘d made a change I was looking at Settings to verify it “ and not seeing my new tone shown there. Now I just fie off a quick test call (or text) if I want to verify a new tone is working.
— A couple of extra options the app offers are the ability to record your own ringtone and to share your ringtones via Bluetooth.
— Thomas had some big issues when he looked at AnyRing. Two of the major ones were stability (it crashed his springboard when calls came in) and lag (when previewing ringtones). Thus far I have not seen these issues at all. I ‘ve had numerous test and real calls, swapped my default ringtones many times over, and not had a single springboard crash. I ‘ve also not seen any lag when previewing the ringtones.
— There are a few places where the app could do with some improvement. When searching for artists / songs, it really should have an A-Z sidebar control to speed up searches. Setting the start and end point is currently done by setting minutes and seconds with a spinner control “ it would be nicer to have a slider as some desktop apps use.
I ‘m not sure which version of the app Thomas reviewed “ I ‘m guessing there may have been a few updates between his look (back in October) and mine, as I ‘ve certainly come away with a much more positive impression of the program. In fact, I ‘ll put my money where my mouth / typing fingers are on that one. I ‘ve bought the app.
Version Used for this post: 3.2
AnyRing is available now in the Cydia store, priced at $3.99 and with a 10-day free trial available.
Update: The AnyRing app ended up causing severe problems and crashes on my iPhone and I ended up having to remove it. See my post HERE for further details on that. Since then, some readers have reported similar issues with the app. So I have to say this is an app to stay away from for now.
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TAGS: iphone apps, iPhone ringtone maker apps
