How to set an MP3 as a ringtone on a Samsung Galaxy S3

 We all love to personalise our own phones in various ways, and one of the most common ways to personalise our phones is select our own ringtones. Sadly if you're using an Android phone, such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 things aren't always as easy as you'd wish them to be. For that reason I've decided to put this guide on here to explain how to select your MP3's as a ringtone on a Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone.

The first step is to open the "Music" application, the in-built music playing application, from here you need to find the song you wish to use. For this example I'll be using Our Lady Peace's track "All You Did Was Save My Life" (see the screen shot on the left). After finding the song select it to play and then press the phones "Menu" button to open up a contextual menu.

After pressing the "Menu" button on the phone you will see a menu that pops up over the album image of the track you've chosen to use (see the image to the right). This menu will have a number of options but the one you need to select is "Set as" which will be in the lower half of the list.

After selecting "Set as" you will be given 3 new options. Yo will be able to select the track as a a "Phone ringtone", a "Caller ringtone" or an "Alarm ringtone". From this menu you should select "Phone ringtone" to select the track as your phone's ring tone.

After selecting an option in the previous menu you will be taken back to the music playing screen. The music playing screen will have a swift message near the bottom telling you that the ringtone has been added (see the image on the right).

How to set a custom notification ringtone with a Samsung Galaxy S2

 In the past these guides have looked at setting custom alarm tones and setting custom ringtones but what I hadn't thought of including was setting a notification tone. A notification ringtone is the tone that will play whenever you get a text (like a text tone) or an e-mail or any other form of notification.

Before you start anything you need to make sure the song you want is in the notifications folder (sdcard/media/music/notification) before you go any further you need to make sure you've moved the file there. After you've sure the file you want is
in the right place open up the "Sound" setting screen (press menu on the home screen, select settings and then sounds) which should open up a screen a bit like the one on the left. What you need to do here is make sure "Silent mode" is turned off or else a number of options will be greyed out including the important one of "Notification ringtone".

With silent mode deactivated you'll be allowed to click on on "Notification ringtone" as you can see in this screen shot to the right. After clicking on this you'll be able to select any track from the "notification" folder we looked at at the start.

If you've decided, as I have here, to put your whole music collection into the "notification" folder you'll be able to select any song off your phone to play as a when you get a notification. When you've chosen the song press on "OK" as as long as you don't turn your phone on to silent mode you'll hear your choice of tone whenever you get a text or e-mail.

How to set a ring tone on a Samsung Galaxy S2

Although Android phones are some of the best on the market (in fact  I'd go as far as to say the Samsung Galaxy S2 IS the best phone on the market right now) they do make some things much more complicated than they need to. One thing that never was as straightforward as it should have been was setting a ringtone. This how to guide will walk you through one of the methods of setting a ring tone on a Samsung Galaxy S2, the same method can be applied to a number of other Android phones including the HTC Wildfire (and presumably the whole HTC android range).

The first step it to open the "Music" application. Here it is shown on the home screen image between the "BBC iPlayer" and "YouTube" apps.
When you've opened the music player the next step is to find the track you want to use for your ring tone. If like me, you have a very deep collection of music on your phone (in my case over 800 songs) you may have a small nightmare so use the albums and artists options to narrow down the search for all elusive track.

When you've found the track you need to select it. This will usually mean the song automatically plays, though you can pause it before it's started if you want to do it all silently.

In this example we will be using Billy Joel's excellent track "An Innocent Man" from the album "An Innocent man". After selecting the track you need to then press menu and you will again open a small menu at the bottom of the screen. At this point you need to select the option "Set as" which will open a menu that looks like the one below.

When you get to this screen you select what you want to use that track in particular for. Do you want to set a Phone ringtone (which will play when ever you get a call), a Call ringtone (which will play when a specific person rings) or an alarm tone (to go off when you need waking up).

If you wish to select a number of different Caller ringtones you just go through the process again from the song selection part and and select different callers. Whilst if you wish to change the ringtone at any time you just start this process from the beginning. It is worth noting however that this isn't the only way to set a ringtone on the Samsung Galaxy S2.
Like setting a different wallpaper, choosing a ring tone is another way to personalise your Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone and put your stamp on the handset to show that it's yours.