Does the Mosquito Ringtone work on the iPhone?

The iPhone has been a huge success from Apple with many people loving their iPhone so much that they could never go back to using an ordinary cell phone, myself included. But does the mosquito ring tone work on the iPhone? I ran a few tests with the Teen Buzz ringtone and my iPhone to find out!

First I went to the source for Teen Buzz on my iPhone to see how the website works and if the files would play in the Safari browser, and of course they do (you have to use the direct mp3 link — green download buttons. No flash player for the iPhone yet).

The Bad News

It appears that the iPhone is limited to somewhere between 14khz and 15khz as the 15khz tone does not play correctly on the iPhone. Perhaps Apple did this purposely to prevent people from using higher pitched ringtones, to prevent damage to the phone’s internal speakers and/or people’s ears!? I can’t find any references to the capabilities of the speaker in the iPhone itself or to any studies about the long term affects of hearing mosquito ringtone like sounds for any lenght of time.

If you want to use the 14khz tone, which most people 50 and younger can hear, you will still need a third party ringtone application for the iPhone, as Apple prevents you from using any ringtones on the device except those that you buy from iTunes.

Does anyone have any more specific information out there about speaker capabilites on the iPhone and why things over 14khz will not play? Please share your thoughts and comments! After this Easter break I will have time to figure out the exact high range limitation of the iPhone. I will also release results on whether this is a hardware or software limitation.

Update: You can view my update to this here: iPhone Speaker information