Minka Wiltz, an actress in Atlanta, has tried to answer her phone to the thrrrrup, thrrrrup, thrrrrup of a truck bouncing down a pothole-pocked street.

Others say they thought they heard phones ring while taking a shower, using a blow-dryer or watching commercials. What they are hearing is a barely discernable sound — perhaps chimes, a faint trill or an electronic bleat — that they mistake for the ringtone of their cellphone, which isn't ringing. This audio illusion — called phantom phone rings or, more whimsically, ringxiety or fauxcellarm — has emerged recently as an Internet discussion topic and has become a new reason for people to either bemoan the techno-saturation of modern life or question their sanity.

Some sound experts believe that because cellphones have become a fifth limb for many, people now live in a constant state of phone vigilance, and hearing sounds that seem like a telephone's ring can send an expectant brain into action.

"My experience has been hearing just a few notes that are similar to my phone's ring, my brain will fill in the rest," said David Laramie, a doctoral student at the Los Angeles campus of the California School of Professional Psychology, who is writing his dissertation about the effect of cellphones on behavior.

But Guy Moore, an assistant professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal, said human ears do not do a good job finding the source of sounds around 1,000 hertz using either method, so that a noise in that range seems just as likely to be coming from the television to the right as a purse sitting to the left.

"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," he said in an interview published in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

"You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface -- like the iPod today -- and then lost its position," Gates said.

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"If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I'd bet on the mobile phone for sure," Gates told the newspaper.

Yahoo gave no indication how long it would keep its initial pricing of its Music Unlimited service, which is 6.99 dollars a month or 4.99 dollars for those who buy a one-year subscription.

Additionally, Yahoo will be offering consumers permanent downloads at 79 to 99 cents a song, cutting into the turf of Apple's iTunes service, but also others including RealNetworks and Napster.