I have my system ringtone set to "silent". To be clear, my phone is not in silent mode, just the default ringtone is set to "silent".

My notifications (texts etc.) still play a tone.

My thinking was that even though the default ringtone was silent I could still set custom ringtones for each contact so the phone would still ring for important calls. It seems the default "silent" is overriding the custom contact tones as my phone doesn't play any ringtone even after setting it per contact.

Any thoughts on this?

I'm using an Optimus Elite Android 2.3.7