Mobile Tweaks

This is a review of Vringo, video ringtones for the mobile from www.vringo.com.

Review Conditions

Vringo 2.0 (295) beta was installed on a Nokia E71, an S60 3rd edition FP1 device.

Installation

I got the beta version 2.0(295) from http://beta.vringo.com/. This is not yet available for public use but its the stable one and I recommend it. Its a .sis file that can be installed using the Nokia Installer. 

First View

Its always nice to have videos as ring tones instead of the plain old ringtones. Vringo is a social networking site for creating and sharing video ringtones! Read on.

Main Review

During the installation process, you are asked to login using your mobile number and password. The same login credentials are used for the website too. The initial setup takes a while (not 1 or 2 minutes as the application suggests –;).

There is a whole array of video ringtones under numerous categories on www.vringo.com. You can also upload the videos you shot on your mobile and they are made available as video ringtones for everyone else to see and use. The ringtones you like can be selected and moved to “My Vringtones”. The next time you perform a sync, these ringtones are copied onto the mobile.

You can invite Vringtone buddies to view and use your Vringtones as well as share their tones with you.

During the initial setup, the application retrieves all video ringtones from My Vringtones from the web. Subsequently, video ringtones on the mobile can be synced with the website daily or hourly. Manual sync is also possible.  There are a bunch of other options too.

The best part is that at http://www.vringo.com/studio/, you can make your own video ringtones. This can be done in 3 easy steps: 1. Search the web for videos 2. Edit the video into a ringtone 3. Send to the phone. The video length is fixed at 30 seconds to enable quick download. A link of the video ringtone is sent as an SMS. The link then informs you to perform a sync using the Vringo application installed on the mobile and the new video ringtone is available.

I must say that Vringo has perfected the art of creating video ringtones from videos on the web, sending them to the mobile in a simple and easy manner.

Handling

Vringo is highly data intensive and I used only WiFi for all my operations to set up ring tones and sync them manually. 

Weaknesses

Sometimes, when the application starts, upon reboot, I got the message “Loading video ringtone manager” for quite a long time. I suspect that this happens when I chose to select the wireless access point manually. At that time, the access point selection dialog gets hidden to the background and this message goes on forever.

The video ringtone does not cover the whole screen. It covers 3/4 of the screen and doesn’t look very elegant on the screen. A full screen video would be more eye candy, just like SkyeCaller Pro II.

The video ringtone is very loud and is not appropriate for all times of the day. I would love to set the video ringtone only for certain profiles, e.g. Outdoor, when its ok to have a loud video playing to notify an incoming call. S60 allows us to set a video as a ringing tone for specific profiles or assign them to specific contacts. This option is absolutely needed for Vringo.

Conclusion

Vringo’s features like sharing videos and creating video ringtones online and pushing them to the mobile will make it very attractive to the young crowd. The application and the videos are free to use so far. Its is definitely worth a look. I’ll give it 3 of 5.

Source: Best of Symbian – S60 Software Reviews