About polyphonic, RTTL and monophonic ringtones
Polyphonic tones are played on cellular phones that have the capability of playing up to 16 separate tones at once. The combination of tones creates a harmonic melody. Polyphonic ringtones are more musical than a monophonic ringtone. Newer phones support polyphonic ringtones. MIDI tones can be used as ringtones, message alert tones and as sound effects in mobile phone games. The first Nokia phone to use polyphonic MIDI tones was the Nokia 3510. Most new Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Samsung etc. mobile phones can play MIDI ringtones.
One of the oldest type of melodies was RTTL ringtones. These ringbacks has also known as Ring Tone Text Transfer Language or keypress tones. More about RTTL you can learn on our page dedicated to RTTL tones.