SportOn Video Ringtones – customize your ringtone with action sports clips!
by Antonio Wells
Aug 15, 2012 2:05 PM –
Install
SportOn Video Ringtones is for the die hard sports fanatic. It allows you to set action sports video ringtones for incoming calls, text & picture messages on your Android.
Price: Free, $0.99 per video ringtone in-app purchase, $1.98 per 4 videos with subscription
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy S3
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Customize your ringtone with action sports clips!
Cons
- Tons of clips, yet the app makes it seem like a few dozen clips.
- Doesn’t include most sports genres but has a decent selection.
- Convoluted setup of video ringtones.
- User experience issues, needs polish.
Features:
Ever wanted to personalize your phone’s ringtones with video? Well, if you’re a sports buff SportOn Video Ringtones will tickle your fancy. The app allows you to change your incoming calls, text messages and picture messages, or alarm tones to shining moments from various sports action video clips. The library of content is broken into you sections; New and Top 10, plus you’re given one free montage clip, whereas, all the rest of the video clips can be purchased for $1.99 $0.99 each. In my opinion, that is overpriced decently priced for a low quality fifteen or so second video clip. What’s disturbing, SportOn has what seems like thousands of clips on their website, yet the way the app is presented, it seems like a max of thirty video clips. Therefore to a new user, it would seem that you are limited to the New & Top 10 section, else, use the search to find content.
This leads me to the unintuitive navigation structure in this app. The main tabs are New, Top 10 and Search, yet no tab for “My Videos”… this you can find by pressing the phone’s Menu button. Once in My Videos section, the place where all your free and purchased videos live, you can tap a video to set either as Standard (video ringtone for all incoming calls), Personal (choose an individual contact), SMS (text message), MMS (picture message) or Alarm videotone.
If you do find some clips you like, there are three purchase options to get your content; either via WAC Carrier billing, via credit card, or via PayPal. I tried the second option and it sent me to a blank webpage after checkout so I opted for the last option and PayPal worked, the screen was oddly tiny though.
After you’ve gotten your content downloaded and set as a videotone, the app has a quirky glitch, for about half a second the normal incoming call screen displays along with regular ringtone, then SportOn Video Ringtones intercepts the display and plays the videotone… weird. :-?
In the end, after a few setup hiccups, you can get a cool video ringtone to show off or taunt your friends like in the vid below…
http://youtu.be/yl7jY7VpjlQ
Watch on Mobile
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SportOn Video Ringtones Start Screen
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SportOn Video Ringtones in Call
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SportOn Video Ringtones Menu Options
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SportOn Video Ringtones New Videos
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SportOn Video Ringtones Top 10 Videos
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SportOn Video Ringtones Search Videos
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SportOn Video Ringtones My Videos Library
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SportOn Video Ringtones Setup Options
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SportOn Video Ringtones Preview Videos
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SportOn Video Ringtones Personal Videotones
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SportOn Video Ringtones General Settings Menu
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SportOn Video Ringtones WAC Carrier Billing Option
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SportOn Video Ringtones Credit Card Billing Option
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SportOn Video Ringtones PayPal Billing Option
Usefulness:
Please note, this app is fans sports fans as you can only purchase and use the video clips the app offers to set as a videotone.
Currently, the app licenses content from National Hockey League, Red Bull Media House, Badminton World Federation, National Lacrosse League; additionally from Motocross, Surfing, Skateboarding, Skiing, Track & Field, Tennis, and more. So if you’re a NFL football fan like myself, you won’t find any content. 
Tip: If, however, you are looking for an app that allows you to set your own videos as videotones, try Video Caller ID.
Ease of Use:
As mentioned, SportOn Video Ringtones is not the most intuitive to navigate. The structure of content makes it seem like there is very limited content, therefore, you must rely on searching for what you want. Even then, the number of results do not match those on their website- far less results. Update: the New and Search results have been increased to show more results, however, it would be ideal to have paginated content if more actually exists.
Frequently Used:
It could be quite often. If you set this app as your default ringtone, then obviously every time someone calls you. Plus it could be extended to fire off for every text message received or alarm trigger.
Interface:
As griped about the interface has user experience issues in navigation and videotone setup. After setup, you get the standard video ringtone screen showcasing the video and call answer/dismiss buttons. Wishful thinking would ask for theme packages and larger video… hopeful those can be feature enhancements along with aforementioned bugs fixed.