The top 7 geeky ringtones

Sarah Dobbs

Now that we live in a world where the mobile phone has replaced the boom box as the music-playing annoyance du jour, your ringtone says a lot about you. So what's yours?

Published on Aug 22, 2007

Loath as Simon is to admit it, the days when phones went 'ring, ring' are long gone. Even polyphonic tones, which once seemed so exciting in their approximations of real songs, seem hopelessly outdated. Nowadays, phones can play snippets of MP3s to alert you to the fact that your mother's calling... which means there's a lot more scope to individualise tones, and, obviously, a lot more scope to be geeky...

Incidentally, my ringtone is the most obscurely geeky thing ever and you wouldn't be impressed if I told you what it is, so I'll just get on with a countdown of the geekiest tones now:

#7 X-Men theme tune
Approximately half the Internet seems to have owned up to having this ringtone, which I thought was odd till I revisited it via YouTube and remembered how awesome it is. I don't even like the X-Men and I'd quite like this ringtone.

#6 Final Fantasy VII victory fanfare
I kind of feel like I've missed out by not playing Final Fantasy, in any incarnation, ever, but - people really do love this bit of music, don't they?

#5 Zelda theme - from the NES
So geeky it hurts.

#4 Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme
... Yeah, okay, I actually used to have this one. Of course I did, I'm a Buffy geek. I used to have the "grr, argh" from the end credits as a text message alert, too. And it was great.

#3 Harry Potter theme
Maybe a bit creepy and downbeat for everyday use, but there's something about this theme tune that screams "re-create me on an old Nokia 3210! I'll sound exactly the same!"

#2 Star Trek music
Having just played them all to myself over and over to the point of insanity, I actually like the Voyager theme tune the best, but the one from Next Gen is probably the most credible.

#1 Star Wars Imperial March
Dum dum dum, dum, de-dum, dum, de-dum... Okay, either of the two main themes from Star Wars could easily take this top spot, but I'm going with the Imperial March because it's more evil. And therefore better. Star Wars music is just so recognisable that it's the quickest way of signalling to everyone within earshot that you are a big geek. So it's ace.