What do EMS and WAP mean in terms of cell phones?

[bbernardini]

Specifically in this quote:

"Downloadable Ringtones via EMS or WAP"

???

[Liberal Veteran]

1. Here ya go!

EMS = Enhanced Messaging Service. It is an extension to SMS, that allows
you to add pictures, sounds and animations to your text messages (both
predefined and user defined of each of these). It also allows text
formatting, so you can make text bold, coloured, different font sizes,
different alignments etc.

WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. The idea comes from the wireless industry, from companies such as Openwave.com, Nokia and Ericsson. The point of this standard is to serve internet contents and internet services to wireless clients, WAP devices, such as mobile phones and terminals. The authoritative source for WAP is The Open Mobile Alliance Ltd.

[bbernardini]

2. Thanks!

Now I just have to figure out what that means to me. :)

[BigMcLargehuge]

3. lemme shed some light on it for you :)

I just wrote an entire course on this subject!


EMS-

EMS uses the Short Message Service infrastructure, that is a SMS server installed in the wireless network, to allow you to send and receive multimedia images through that service. Think of it like the old AOL instant messenger, text only, and the new AOL instant messenger where you can send pictures and audio.

Do you want more technical information?

WAP-

Wireless Access Protocol is a standard allowing adequately equipped carriers and cell phones to access a subset of information available on the Internet. WAP offers content from about 1000 providers (in North America) converted from HTML which doens't display on a cell phone, to Wireless Markup Language (WML) that does. These content pages are converted and stored on the carrier's WML server and accessed via the handset at between 9k and 48k download speeds. WAP is not equipped to handle embedded multimedia or streaming information and relies on specific formatting and line length (160 lines I think is max per page).

WAP is considered a 2G or second generation service, that hasn't ever really caught on in the US because site offerings in WML are so small.

Do you want more technical information?

I can draw you a picture of both EMS and WAP architecture if you want...

[bbernardini]

4. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of ringtones this Sony phone has..

Don't know if it's monophonic or polyphonic. Sony Ericsson T62u, specifically, and the info page says ringtones can be received those two ways.

[BigMcLargehuge]

5. then you mean downloading them

you can request ringtones be delivered and stored via either EMS or WAP.... that's all it means. In one way you'd request them from, say, a website with your computer and they would send you an EMS containing the tone... Using WAP means you could access a list from your handset and it make a download request that would then send the tone via EMS to your phone.