A question about a new non-fiction book.

Someone wrote me this question:

I've come across the following sentence. I do not get the meaning of it.
What's the meaning of "background"?
I do not get the structure of from to. Which of two "tos" is the one of "from .. to" structure?

Here's the sentence being asked about:

When you get a new cell phone, for example, you have series of choices to make. The fancier the phone, the more of the choices you face, from the background to the ring sound to the number of times the phone rings before the caller is sent to voice mail.

Usually the phrase is "from A to B". However, sometimes we extend the use of the phrase to "from A to B to C (to D to E...)". By doing so,
we are giving steps within the range from A to the final point.

Personally, I don't like this style of writing so much. I prefer the style below:

I drove from New York to Washington DC to Asheville, NC. <- not so good
I drove from New York to Washington DC, and then on to Asheville, NC. <- better

In this case, the meaning is that there are three features that come with fancier phones. The fancier the phone, the more choices you face, such as background image, ringtone, and the number of times the phone rings before the caller is sent to voice mail.

Then the next question was:

Does " the background to the ring sound", if it is a phrase, mean manner mode?

"The background" refers to the background image of the screen. You can call it a wallpaper. "The ring sound" means "ring tone", the sound when the phone rings.

The text being asked about appears to be from a book called "Nudge".

http://books.google.com/books?id=dSJQn8egXvUC&dq=Nudge+by+Thaler+%26+Sunstein&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=ajUlSsntD4aUkAWxsaysBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

There's an excerpt of it here, including the sentence asked about above:

http://aliciakan.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/good-marketers-are-good-choice-architects/

From questions about grammar to confusion over vocabulary, I can take them all. Please ask!