Android has a lot of quirks and annoyances, a common one is setting a custom ringtone, then later no ringtone plays when there is an incoming call (the phone is silent). This happens when the audio file is not located in the correct file location or the wrong application is used when choosing an audio file as a ringtone. Later if the phone is plugged into a computer and the USB file system is enabled the custom ringtone becomes unavailable and the OS "forgets" the ringtone. This is how to use and set a custom ringtone from an mp3, ogg, etc. audio file so that the phone won't forget:
- Connect your phone to a PC and copy the file to the folder \sdcard\media\audio\ringtones on your phone. You must create any of these folders that don't exist.
- Disconnect your phone from the PC.
- Select a contact and from the menu choose "Set ringtone". If given the option to choose an application to select the ringtone choose "Media Storage" and then select the "Always" button. Never use any application other than "Media Storage" to choose the audio file.
- From the list of available media choose your ringtone (the name that appears depends on the IDv3 tags in the audio file you added). But wait! What if you don't see the file you just added? The media list is populated by the OS scanning periodically for audio files and it can take some time to discover the new file. So you have two options: first is to just wait a while and retry until the file shows up in the list, second you can clear the media cache and force it to rebuild which still means waiting a while. To clear the cache do this: menu - Manage Apps - All - Media Storage - Clear data. Now reboot the phone and wait for Media Storage data to be rebuilt. This can take tens of minutes. Eventually your audio file will show up in the list.
You can also set the phone's default ringtone by selecting System settings - Sound - Phone ringtone in place of step 3. That's it, now your ringtones should always be available even after treating the phone as USB storage.
