With sleek and sexy cell phones like the LG Chocolate and the LG Shine under its belt, LG has edged Motorola to become one of the most well-known manufacturers of design-centric phones. It's no wonder, then, that Prada--one of the world's premier fashion houses--has chosen to partner with LG to produce the very first Prada-branded cell phone. Ever since the LG first announced the Prada, there has been a hurricane of hype surrounding the phone. And the hype makes sense: not only is the phone slim and beautiful, it's also a touch screen phone similar to the much-ballyhooed and yet-to-be-released Apple iPhone. Yet, we would've liked 3G support, and the touch screen interface isn't for everyone. If you simply must have the latest in fashion phones, the LG Prada fits the bill, but don't expect to do a lot with it.

Design

Simply put, the LG Prada is the epitome of elegance and style. It fits the very definition of a fashion phone, and is quite possibly one of the most attractive handsets we've ever seen. Decked out in a lightweight piano-black shell, the Prada has a minimalist design, with smooth rounded corners and a touch of silver adorning its sides. It looks like a miniature version of a fancy plasma TV or a piece of high-class contemporary art.

The design focus extends even to its packaging; the phone comes in a trendy black box fit for jewelry, plus a hard leather case with an embossed Prada logo. We would advise that you keep it in the case most of the time, since the Prada's black finish attracts fingerprint smudges like a magnet. The phone is also marvelously compact at 2.13 inches wide by 3.89 inches tall by 0.47 inch deep and weighing in at a scant 3 ounces. Because it's so slim and lightweight, you will have no problem slipping it into a pants pocket or a small clutch purse for a night out on the town.

The main attraction of the LG Prada is probably its enormous 3-inch diagonal touch display. The brilliant screen supports 256,000 colors that really show off the rich and colorful detail of the Prada's gorgeous menu interface. You can adjust the brightness and backlight time, but not the font size. That sits just fine with us, however, as the default font is quite nice and large already. You also can choose from a variety of innovative themes that take advantage of the touch screen interface--one of our favorites has a moving fish on the home screen wallpaper that you can direct with your finger.

Speaking of the touch screen, you'll need to use it with your finger to navigate the phone, as the Prada does not come with a stylus. Also, since it's almost entirely touch screen with just a few keys, you'll need to get accustomed to dialing and texting without any tactile feedback. Surprisingly, this went a lot better than we thought. The screen's sensitivity was just right, and we had no problem dialing numbers with the virtual keypad. Texting messages was a little trickier, though, as the Prada does not provide a virtual QWERTY keyboard; rather, you have to text messages with a virtual alphanumeric keypad just like on a normal phone.

If we concentrated hard enough, we managed to text normally, but it did require a bit of precision on our part and there were many times when our fingers slipped and we pressed the wrong key by mistake. Again, it wasn't too difficult, but it does require a bit of a learning curve. And of course, you won't be able to dial by feel.

Below the display are the Send, Clear, and End/Power keys, which are a little hard to press because they're a little too skinny for our tastes. The left spine of the LG Prada is home to a charger/headset jack, a volume rocker, and a sound profile key, while the keyguard lock and the MP3/camera key are on the right spine. There's also a camera lens on the back, complete with a self-portrait mirror and flash. The LG Prada has a MicroSD card slot, but it is inconveniently located behind the battery of the phone.

Features

The LG Prada may have a beautiful design, but its feature set isn't too shabby, either. Let's start with the basics first. The Prada has a large 1,000-entry phone book with room in each entry for four numbers, an e-mail address, and a memo. You can save contacts to groups, assign them a photo for caller ID, and pair them with any of 10 available 40-chord polyphonic ringtones. The LG Prada also supports MP3 ringtones if you wish to add your own. Other essential features include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calculator, a world clock, a unit converter, and a calendar. Those looking for additional functionality will like the voice recorder, e-mail support, Bluetooth 2.0 support, a speakerphone, and an FM radio tuner. Do note that the FM radio only works if you have the included headset attached, because it uses the cord as an antenna. Another neat feature for the working professional is a document viewer, which you can use to view Office documents. There's no way to edit them, but at least you can get a glance at your work while in transit. Even though the LG Prada has EDGE, for such an expensive phone we wish that it could at least have 3G support.

The LG Prada does come with an admirable 2.0-megapixel camera with plenty of settings. You can take photos of up to 1600x1200 resolution or all the way down to VGA mode at around 320x240 pixels. There's also a self-timer, three quality modes, four color effects, white balance settings, a choice of shutter sounds, and a multishot mode. The Prada also has a built-in camcorder with two resolutions (128x96 and 176x144) with settings similar to that of the still camera. Photo quality was admirable overall, with sharp detail and distinct colors, though the low-light photos had a bit of an overcast look to them. Video quality was not as good, with a rather grainy quality to most of our clips.

We really liked the design of Prada's music player on the LG. It is pretty basic in that you can only do so much with your music (like play, pause, fast forward, and repeat/shuffle your playlists), but we still liked its simple, minimalist interface. It supports MP3, WAV, AAC, AAC+, and AAC++ files, and you don't need any special software to get tunes into the phone. Simply attach the Prada as a USB Mass Storage device and drag and drop the songs over. We wish that the Prada had a 3.5mm headset jack instead of the proprietary port, however. The LG Prada also has a built-in video player that can playback MP4 files.

Personalization options are pretty decent with the Prada. It has a variety of included wallpapers and sounds, all of which take advantage of the beautiful touch screen and excellent speaker sound. You also can download more of these options with the wireless Web browser. The phone also comes with four games - Halloween Fever, Photo Puzzle, Virus, and Piper - though you can always download more as well.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give this phone a 7, especially because the big wired headsets have been replaced with others which are smaller and fit much better into your ears. You can set any MP3 files as ring tone if you open the music player first and play them or you can go to Profiles and personalize the caller ringtone. Don't forget that you must put the MP3 files in the MP3 folder on the phone's memory or on the external memory (microSD card). There's no way to associate any MP3 files to Message alerts or any other alert except for the ring tones. The basic FM Radio doesn't have any RDS capabilities and it can only memorize 12 base stations. Furthermore, the reception is pretty good, but surprisingly enough, you cannot run it in the background.

Menu and Software

LG Prada features a more "primitive" menu than any other LG mobile phone. The interface is simple, intuitive and very easy to use, even for people that are not acquainted with LG mobiles. The four shortcuts on the main screen are not configurable (that is, you cannot change them) and will only give you access to Main Menu, Dialing Pad, Messages and Contacts. The clock on the main display can be easily moved with your fingers anywhere on the screen and can also be used to quickly set an alarm. There are 4 great themes that you can use to personalize the phone, including a black and white Prada theme. All themes are keeping the floating clock on the main display, which by the way can be seen as digital, analog or in both modes. You will have no problems "fingering" through the various menus of the phone, but you will have a hard time texting or scrolling.

Unfortunately, the phone's software has lots of bugs, exactly like those found in many other LG mobile phones (LG KU580 makes an exception). People will find that they won't be able to attach icons to all contacts or play some MP3 files. All these problems seem to appear randomly, but frequently. Although the phone features Java MIDP 2.0 emulator there's a big chance that you won't be able to run some Java compatible applications on the phone – reason unknown. Also, you can set MP3 files as ring tones if you open the music player and run those files or if you go to Profiles and personalize the caller ring.

Fortunately, there are some good applications pre-installed on the phone that you can use. There's a Unit Converter, Calculator (basic and scientific), Alarm (only one alarm to set!), World Time Clock, Calendar and Memo. With the help of a Document viewer, you will be able to read any .ppt, .doc, .xls, .pdf or .txt format file. The big screen will offer you a better view, especially when using the Landscape mode, but again…scrolling will be a pain.

The File Manager of the phone is called My Stuff and here's the place where you can store any image, music file or document. The basic Internet browser included won't offer you too many choices, but at least you'll be able to open full HTML web pages. As it came up right before the latest KU580 Chocolate, Prada's firmware needs some adjustments to improve functionality. Even if it’s a fashionistas phone, people will want to be able to play MP3 files no matter where they are, copying them or maybe install some other Java compatible third-party applications.

Communication

The GPRS Class 10 (32 - 48 kbps) is enough for users of this type of handset, but it would've been great to be able to make videocalls on such a big touchscreen. Anyway, LG doesn't escape its mediocrity regarding the connectivity tools and offers only 89 Kbps download and 51 Kbps upload data transfer speeds when activating EDGE technology. I've been able to transfer files through Bluetooth 2.0 with speeds up to 37 KB. LG said that the phone definitely supports A2DP, but there seem to be problems and not all Bluetooth headsets are fully compatible with LG's Prada. Some users even experience problems during music playback, like disconnection between the two devices when you want to stop music play for a short period of time. If you want to synchronize the phone with your PC through the USB 2.0 port you must first choose which mode to use: Data transfer or Mass Storage. Furthermore, you need to install the LG Mobile Sync software that comes with the phone to be able to actually get synchronized.

Be very careful when synching your Contacts as the phone doesn't make any difference between the SIM contacts or Phone Memory contacts, mixing them both in one long list, so you'll probably discover that you have the same contact twice. Again, it takes too much time to actually connect the phone with the PC and you won't be able to use any Outlook with your contacts. The phone features all messaging capabilities (POP3, SMTP and IMAP4), but lacks any SSL security compatibility.

The tri-band (GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900) network compatible candybar has a mediocre GSM signal reception. Sound is clear but much lower than any other LG mobile phone. It's almost impossible to have a conversation in crowded areas even with the help of a handsfree headset.

Processor and Memory

LG KE850 Prada features an ARM9 family processor running at up to 117 MHz speeds, the same as the one embedded in Chocolate Platinum. Even if it's a low class CPU, it is more than enough to handle most of the operations needed. Nevertheless, you'll experience lags and frames losses when running movies and the gaming experience will be less smooth than expected. As I have stated above, the phone features Java MIDP 2.0 compiler but it seems to have some troubles in running some third-party applications.

Multimedia

The candybar features 40 channels polyphonic sounds, less than previous Chocolate models, but seems to offer a good multimedia experience. It sounds pretty good with the stereo wired headset included in the package. You can even use other headphones thanks to the 2.5mm compatible remote control. The music player included in the Prada phone is different and looks much better than those found in any other LG model. Unfortunately, you won't have any complex functions like equalizer or stereo widening to improve the quality of the sound. Still, the music sounds very loud when you set the volume to the max and isn’t really not devoid of bass.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give this phone a 7, especially because the big wired headsets have been replaced with others which are smaller and fit much better into your ears. You can set any MP3 files as ring tone if you open the music player first and play them or you can go to Profiles and personalize the caller ringtone. Don't forget that you must put the MP3 files in the MP3 folder on the phone's memory or on the external memory (microSD card). There's no way to associate any MP3 files to Message alerts or any other alert except for the ring tones. The basic FM Radio doesn't have any RDS capabilities and it can only memorize 12 base stations. Furthermore, the reception is pretty good, but surprisingly enough, you cannot run it in the background.

Battery

This is probably the weakest point. Even if LG didn't state more than 3 hours of talk time and 300 hours of standby, what if the real numbers are lower than this? The 800 mAh Li-Ion battery didn't last more than 4 days on a light use and no more than 2 and a half days on a heavy use. There's not much to say about the phone's battery only that it simply SUCKS.

Conclusion

The good: The LG Prada cell phone has a sophisticated and stylish design that is sure to turn heads. Its 3-inch display is stunning, and the touch screen interface is surprisingly usable. It also has a 2.0-megapixel camera, a music player, and a document viewer.

The bad: The LG Prada does not have 3G support, which is unfortunate for such an expensive phone. While the touch screen interface isn't too difficult to use, it still requires a little bit of a learning curve. A few of the phone's external buttons are a little hard to press, and the microSD card slot is inconveniently located behind the battery.