LG Prada 3.0 review

The original Prada phone, which came out in December 2006, was the first mobile with a capacitive touchscreen, and was a huge hit for LG. It wasn’t a smartphone, though, and neither was its successor, the keyboard-equipped Prada II.

With the Prada 3.0, LG has finally married the fashionable name to some up-to-date hardware; it’s an Android 2.3 smartphone with a 4.3in 480×800 resolution display and a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor with a dedicated graphics chip. The phone is also just 9mm thick and weighs only 138g.

LG’s website claims the phone’s case is made of leather, when in fact it simply has a plastic case with a leather finish that’s meant to replicate Prada’s unique leather finish, but the rest of the phone’s design is quite impressive, with machined metal buttons and a matching cover for the USB port. The rounded edges and metal end pieces don’t just look good, they also feel durable. Only the plastic casing on the rear feels a bit tacky, but it saves weight and is easy to remove to access the battery, SIM slot and SDHC card slot.

Sadly, battery life isn’t impressive – the phone only lasted for five and a half hours when playing back our test video, which means you’ll probably need to charge it every day unless you’re very strict with Wi-Fi, 3G data and Bluetooth usage. You can use an app like Juice Defender to turn off unwanted services when you’re not using them, but we’d have preferred a larger battery, even if it meant a thicker phone.

Prada’s influence extends further than the faux-leather case, however. The Android interface has been re-modelled in black-and-white, with most of the app icons given the same treatment – only Google’s own apps are in colour, plus any apps you decide to download later. It’s a bit disconcerting at first, as we missed that feeling of familiarity with some common Android apps, but it does look fantastic. We especially like the custom notification area, which includes toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, sound and data, as well as music playback controls. The custom skin’s impact is also helped by the phone’s hugely bright display, which LG claims is twice as bright as the Super AMOLED screens favoured by Samsung.

LG has installed some useful additions to the standard Android apps. There’s a Car Home app that presents you with large icons for launching navigation, music or contacts apps, and which accepts voice commands. There’s a desk clock app with big, easy-to-read numbers that flip down like an old alarm clock; when you tap on the clock, music playback controls pop up. There’s an image editor and a copy of Polaris Office, which lets you edit office files.

LG has also added social aggregation in the form of a homescreen widget and a sub-section of the Accounts options page, where you can add your Facebook, Twitter and MySpace accounts. It’s a limited selection of services, and there’s also no way to merge duplicate contacts from different services, but we liked the widgets; there’s one that displays favourite contacts, one that shows a stream of updates and one that lets you show the updates of selected people.

There’s a dedicated camera shutter button, but it’s on the top of the phone next to the USB port, which is unusual but not impractical. The camera takes surprisingly noise-free snaps, although up close you’ll notice heavy noise reduction, which results in a smudged look. The LED flash works well to lighten up dark shots, and you can also shoot Full HD video – however the resulting video is extremely jerky, and we’d advise dropping down to 720p to get smoother frame rates.

We really liked the Prada phone 3.0: it’s light, slim and fast, and its custom design looks great. We also liked LG’s custom Prada skin, but the lack of Android 4.0 is a black mark. The phone is also quite expensive, and we think you’d have to be quite a big fan of Prada to opt for this phone over its rivals at this price point. If you shop around, you can get an HTC Sensation XE for the same price SIM-free, which has more performance and features and has just received an update to Android 4.0.