Mobile Phone Accessories Review

Equipped with the essentials—cell phone and Bluetooth headset—we wonder what else we need to number among the cool girls in the telecom world.

Ringtones, wallpaper, and games, of course.  Without cool ringtones properly set for each caller’s personality and taste, we’re just plain-Janes with phones in our purses.  But we must recognize we venture into vaguely dangerous territory when we go in search of cool ringtones: Free ringtones, for example, are illegal; and some providers try to seduce us with cool sounds, tricking us into way more than we bargained for.

At first, Dada Mobile seems really attractive, because the service appears to offer the most ringtones and other goodies for the lowest price.  We quickly discover, however, in ringtones as in most other important stuff, you get what you pay for: for us poor T-Mobile customers, we get only eight “premium” rings per month, and we learn to our chagrin that “premium” is a polite word for “real song.”  All the other tones are real-song knock-offs that sound a lot like hamsters singing karaoke.

At last, our search takes us to Jamster, which TOPTENReviews.com proclaims, “Jamster ringtone service develops, markets and distributes the latest digital content and applications for the newest generation of high tech mobile handsets, and is “TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award” ringtone download service.”  The TOPTENReviews editors rave, “Jamster can turn your cell phone into a mobile entertainment and communications hub with services that give you access to shopping, downloads, graphics, ringtones, multimedia messaging service (MMS) greeting cards and more.”

Studying the site, we immediately recognize how exceptionally user-friendly it is: all the top features are right there on the front page, displayed according to their popularity.  The front page links not only to ring tones but also to wallpapers, games, videos, and video-tones.  We also immediately see that Jamster has garnered a nomination for a 2008 Mobile Entertainment Award. 

Clearly, both newbs and the technorati can appreciate the site.

Digging deeper, we learn, “Jamba is wholly owned by Fox Entertainment Group Inc., a subsidiary of News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A) and headquartered in Beverly Hills, Calif., and Berlin, Germany. In the U.S. and some other countries, Jamba operates under the brand Jamster.“  In other words, we’re not dealing with just another posse of Internet pirates.  The company shows-off some impressive statistics, too: They „reach one billion consumers around the globe in 35 countries and 25 languages across five continents. Jamster supports more than 2,800 handsets and provides billing connectivity to more than 125 operators worldwide.“

Already leading the league, Fox reorganized Jamba and Jamster in October, 2008, bringing in a team of high-powered executives and marketers charged with maintaining the brand’s leadership in the industry.  Fox emphasized, “The new structure aims to bring further clarity to Fox’s strategic approach to the mobile content industry by underscoring its global leadership in the areas of distributing, licensing, and producing mobile content.”

Clearly, these guys mean business.

We suddenly realize that the plain-Janes may have ringtones and wallpapers, but we have the power to turn our phones into “mobile entertainment hubs.”   Hubs in hand, surely we will dominate the cool girls.