Q. Why do ringtones have to be delivered to my phone by SMS?

Most Nokia phones don't have a "Nokia Composer" program built inside the phone, a software that makes it possible for users to actually type a ringtone directly on their keypad.

For all other Nokia phones that support customizable ringtones (actually, plenty of very widely available models), a new ringtone has to be first composed on a computer or downloaded from the Internet then sent to the phone using one of the following methods:

a specialized website takes care of sending it to your phone using Smart Messaging

you transfer it yourself through a data cable

with some recent Nokia phones, you can transfer it yourself through a free sms gateway