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While the telephone will always be a communicating machine, its features might not be so longstanding. Surrounding the Spartan function of the phone is a variety of interesting things, like attractive screen savers, backgrounds, unique themes and ringtones. Even for the regular phone user with a seemingly humble phone, the opportunities of upgrading and modifying are almost endless.

The most ubiquitous of features that the telephone has is the ringing tone. Perhaps more correctly, we should say that tones need not always ring any more. To the modern phone user, the phone itself has a slew of catchy tunes to choose from but one need not limit themselves to the features available in their phones. Websites such as www.mobile9.com have ringtones available that can be downloaded into your computer and then uploaded to your phone. Popular tones, like new Bollywood numbers and classic tracks like the Mission Impossible music can be transferred to your phone with ease.

Not only are ring tones now available on the net, but websites such as www.zedge.net and www.myfonethemes.com are rapidly gaining popularity for helping us create our own screen-savers and wallpapers and flaunt our creativity. Zedge.net really works too! There are now nine million members of the website worldwide and the count is fast increasing. Popular backgrounds now include pictures of Bollywood stars, hulky bikes and hummers. But don't bind yourself to just that, create something.

Making the phone personal is so easy today, but sadly, the price tag might stand in the way. If you can afford a phone with a camera, then the best background would probably be a picture you snapped. But, if you've got the perfect shot in your computer, don't worry! With a program called PC Suite, anything you might have in your computer can be transferred into your Sony Ericsson or Nokia telephone with the use of a data cable in the same way a USB device works. If you own a Motorola set, the process might be a little bit tricky. First, in the setting menu of the phone, you need to go inside the USB connection and activate the Memory Card. Connecting the phone to a computer then opens a window where different folders such as Audio and Video that hold various items.

Although themes might sound appealing, they can be costly on the battery power of the cell phone, so please be careful if your calls are more important to you than your styles. In fact, screen-savers are not recommended to people who are careful about their battery consumption because unlike their computer counterparts, these creative doodles ironically waste your battery power.

The bottom line is that people are now more concerned about their preferences than they used to be. Now's the chance for all of us to customise, be different, feel special. In the digital world that we encounter every day, what your cell phone looks and sounds like is almost as important as what you say and wear.