Thumb Play
Ease of Use: Excellent
Thumbplay.com is feature rich but not overbearing and cluttered. Categories in the left navigation bar make it easy to find the content you want. You can also toggle between home, ringtones, graphics, games and text by using the tabs at the top of the page.
Feature Set: Excellent
You can browse Thumbplay’s library by artist, genre, charts, type of media and by category. Additionally, they provide a search box that provides accurate results.
Each ringtone has a high-quality preview so you can hear the tone before you buy it. Also, many of the tones include an album cover.
Selection: Excellent
Thumbplay offers more than 50,000 downloads. You can literally browse for hours previewing the content on this site. The online ringtone service provides tones and wallpapers from your favorite blockbusters. One of our favorite pages offered downloads from Pirates of the Caribbean. Thumbplay has all of the enchanting soundtracks and images from your favorite Pirates’ scenes.
This ringtone download service offers two purchasing plans. One is a membership for $9.99/month for 10 downloads/month. The other is about $1.99 per download a la carte.
Help/Support: Excellent
Thumbplay is one of the few ringtone download services to offer 24/7 phone support. We called with a question and the woman was very cordial and helpful. She guided us through their website to the information we needed.
Summary:
Thumbplay quickly became a favorite—the first-class customer service, wide selection and reasonable prices outplay the competition. As an additional perk, Thumbplay offers 10 bonus downloads with the 1st month’s subscription.
Jamster
Ease of Use: Excellent
Jamster has a quick reference tool that makes it easy to browse a complete list of the ringtones performed by a particular artist—very nice. Or, use the search box to help you quickly and efficiently track down a certain song by keyword.
You can customize the Jamster website by country including Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, China and more and view the site in 13 different languages. This is just one of things this service does to cater to your needs.
Feature Set: Excellent
You can fully customize your handset to become a mobile office, a game console, a portable music player or a media center. Jamster is one of the first ringtone services to offer video ringtones–when your phone rings, you’ll not only hear the ringtone
Selection: Excellent
Jamster offers 2 different membership plans, the value plan and XXL plan. With the basic service plan includes two ringtone downloads, one game and three graphics a month. The larger plan includes six ringtones, 10 graphics and four games. Jamster still honors their “Legacy Plans;” however, new members are only given two plan options.
Jamster has one of the largest databases of ringtones and downloads and it is orderly, so you can find just what you need. However, games and applications are not available to Verizon or Virgin Mobile subscribers.
Help/Support: Excellent
Jamster prefers that you contact them with any questions by email, but they do offer customer phone support and a FAQ section.
Summary:
If your cell phone provider is Cingular, T–mobile, Sprint, Cellular One or Cincinnati Bell, Alltel, Virgin or Dobson, Jamster will turn your ringing cell phone into a rocking cell phone. The thousands of ways this service can customize your phone will impress you.
FlyCell
Flycell provides ringtones, voice tones, message tones, wallpapers, screensavers, mobile games and text services for your mobile phone —just about anything imaginable to modify your handheld. This website is the most diverse ringtone download service on the web.
The reason this site doesn’t rank higher is the realtones are impersonations by professional voice artists and not the real musicians–listen closely and you’ll realize the group singing “Hey Jude” isn’t The Beatles. It is also one of the more expensive services we reviewed with a la carte songs costing almost four dollars each.
Ease of Use: Excellent
Flycell’s website has a very professional design and layout. You can search by title or artist to find any ringtone. Signing up for the service is simple-just send a text message and then immediately begin downloading.
This service provides cell phone picture identification that makes it easy to determine if your cell phone is compatible.
Feature Set: Excellent
Flycell has some unique features including a free official magazine that they send right to your phone. This magazine provides updates on selection and services. You can also subscribe to SMS channels, these daily text messages provide you with the latest
Selection: Excellent
Flycell is the most complete source for cell phone downloads offering animated wallpapers, skins and the latest and greatest games. The games come complete with descriptions and screenshots so you’ll know exactly what your buying.
The only shortcoming is that the realtones are not original recordings but impersonations performed by professional voice artists.
Prices for ringtones vary from about $1.99 to $3.99 each, with realtones at the higher end of the spectrum, or you can purchase credits. If you purchase credits, you have to purchase blocks of credits but you get downloads for about half price.
Help/Support: Excellent
Flycell provides a long list of solutions to common problems in their FAQ section and you can contact them with any additional questions or concerns via email.
Summary:
Flycell supports AT&T, T-Mobile, Nextel, Cingular, Verizon, Sprint, Alltel, Boost, Dobson, and Cellular One. If you use one of these cellular providers, this may be a site to browse.
