Samsung Soundboard

The samsung soundboard exists because of one whistle. The company's default notification tone is among the most heard pieces of audio in the world, and almost nobody who hears it daily could hum it accurately, which is exactly why people come looking for it.

One Whistle Everyone Knows

Samsung's tones have a house style: bright, short, cleanly resolved, with a whistled or chimed quality that reads as friendly rather than urgent. It's a deliberate contrast to Apple's more neutral approach, and it's why a Samsung tone is identifiable as Samsung even to someone who has never owned one. The audio does brand work, and it does it well enough that these clips get played on a soundboard years later.

Boot Chimes, Ringtones and Alarms

The board covers three eras. There's the Galaxy S2 boot chime, which is genuine nostalgia audio at this point and gets played the way the old console stings on the gaming sound board do. There's the S10 ringtone from the modern era, which sits in the same nostalgia bracket as the Angry Birds theme. And there are the alarm tones, including a remixed version that treats the original as a sample rather than a sound effect. The remixes get real play, which says something about how embedded the originals are.

Why People Look These Up

Two reasons, and they pull in opposite directions. Some people want the tone back on a phone that has moved on from it. Others want it as a prank, because a Samsung alert in a room full of Android users is the single most reliable way to make everyone check a pocket. The notification soundboard collects the cross-manufacturer version of the same trick.

Using One as Your Own Tone

These are standard MP3 files, so an Android phone will take one as a notification or alarm sound once it's in the right folder, no app required. Setting one as an alarm rather than a notification is the more interesting option, since alarm audio is the part of a phone people actually get sick of. The rest of this soundboard is mostly the opposite of subtle.