Customers using Android smartphones on Verizon can sign up for Slacker Radio tones, a service that lets users select songs or a series of songs to be used as a ringtone or ringback tone.

The tones come from the catalogue of tracks found on Slacker Radio. It comes with a US$2 per month subscription.

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To use the features, a user should download the Slacker Radio app to the smartphone, go to the Slacker Tones section and select which track he wants to use. To pick a ringtone, a user must select a track inside the Slacker Radio library and it will be downloaded to the device. The user should then go to the settings of the phone and pick the new song.

For the Ringback Tone feature, the user has to select the station or song he wishes to use and Verizon will play the track or tracks for callers trying to reach the phone. So instead of hearing the generic ringing tone, they'll hear the selected content.

The subscriber may set one Ringback Tone for all callers, or assign individual tones or stations to a number of contacts.

While the feature of song-based ringback and ringtones have been around for years, the idea introduced by the two companies is the first time a streaming Internet radio service was used to pick a track.

Meanwhile, Verizon released another exclusive deal to its subscribers.

The HTC Desire 612, a variant of AT&T's Desire 610, was made available to the public on Thursday.

The HTC Desire 612 sports a 4.7-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset, an Adreno 305 graphics processing unit and a 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 quad-core processor running Android 4.4 KitKat.

It has a 2,040 milliampere hour battery, a gigabyte worth of random access memory, 8 GB of built-in memory, a microSD card slot capable for expandable memory, an 8 MP rear camera with an LED flash, a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera and dual front-facing speakers.

As a unique feature, Verizon has given the Desire 612 support for the company's XLTE network, which equates to faster data transfer speeds for users.

Tagsverizon, Slacker Radio, streaming, Ringtone, Ringback, HTC Desire 612, HTC