With stylish looks, the Prada phone is an all-touch device that stresses fashion over features. Does it have substance to match its style?
Review summary of the LG KE850 Prada:
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 The LG Prada phone is pretty, stylish and unique. It's lighter and smaller than the iPhone, and though its interface lacks some of the flourish and dazzle of Apple's OS, LG manages to hold their own with stylish menus and slick, modern icons. It isn't a perfect phone, and perhaps doesn't attempt to be, as it lacks many advanced media playback features and an onscreen, QWERTY keyboard. This, plus a lack of good software, keeps the phone from being a better smartphone, media player or even laptop replacement. Still, it makes good calls, and for folks who don't mind paying extra for a lot of style, and the Prada brand, that may be all that matters. Release: April 2007. Price: $600.
Pros: Sleek design. Cool menus and interface ooze style. Very good call quality, solid feature set. Autofocus camera takes nice, usable pictures.
Cons: Lacks 3G, GPS and other advanced phone features. Onscreen keypad is a good compromise, not a great solution. Poor sync options for calendar, contacts and media transfer.
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Full review of the LG KE850 Prada:
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Though the LG KE850 Prada phone may look like an iPhone clone, in fact, we first saw the design a few months before Apple's phone was announced. Clearly, the idea of a touch screen-only phone was brewing in quite a few kettles, and LG must have known it would appeal to a new class of fashionable technorati, because the phone is the being branded and sold by Prada. Our review unit was furnished by Dynamisn, at Dynamism.com, where you can find most of the coolest gadgets generating buzz in the gadget world. Dynamism offers the KE850 Prada phone for $600 unlocked, which brings it in line with Apple's high-end iPhone, but too many direct comparisons here miss the mark.
Design - Very good
Since we certainly don't feel qualified to offer judgment on a Prada bag or a Prada dress, we passed around the Prada phone to some of our more fashionable friends, who all rendered a similar judgment. They adored the phone's look, appreciated its light weight and, in all, found it to be, aesthetically speaking, a better choice than the iPhone. Weight was the biggest issue, but with its gleaming chrome band and Prada slip-case, the Prada phone got oohs and aahs from the right crowd.
Prada hasn't been shy about customizing the interface to enhance the mood, either. When the phone turns on, a devilish chorus sounds and a soft gradient lights up the screen. When you get voice mail, an angelic choir announces its arrival. If the touch experience on the KE850 isn't as responsive or polished as on the iPhone, it isn't for lack of trying, as the Prada phone has plenty of nice icons and menus that take full advantage of the touch screen. Unlike the HTC Touch, which imposed its capacitative screen on Windows Mobile 6, the Prada is built for touch. Most of this is tapping, less dragging and no pinching.
Menus on the Prada phone are kept nice and simple, without long lists of options or settings that would stymie fingers. The phone itself has a few hardware buttons, including "send" and "end" keys, camera and volume controls, and an unlock key. There is a port for power adapters or the included headphone adapter and remote control, but the microSD slot is hidden beneath the battery. Still, a removable battery on a touch screen phone? Who would have thought it possible?
Calling - Very good
Calls on the LG Prada sounded very good, using T-Mobile's network in New York City and central New Jersey. We got no static or noise pollution, and callers said that we sounded like we were on a very high quality cell phone, though we didn't quite hit landline quality. The included software didn't let us synchronize our contacts and schedules with our desktop, which was disappointing, but the address book has all the standard fields you'd expect from a non-smartphone. We miss voice dialing, which we think is a serious omission on a phone without a keypad. For drivers, the lack of voice dialing means you really shouldn't be attempting to make any calls from the road. Still, conference calling worked fine, and the speakerphone, though not very loud, was adequate in a closed auto. Talk time on our review unit approached 5 hours, which is very good, and beyond the manufacturer's expectations.
Messaging - Good
For typing on the Prada phone, LG made an interesting choice. Instead of designing a new keypad, like Apple did with the iPhone, or simply using a tiny popup, as HTC did with the Touch, LG instead opts for a 12-digit numeric pad, just like you'd find on your hardware phone. Predictive T9 input helps things a little, and LG tried to take advantage of the touch screen on T9 word selection, with mixed results. Basically, the phone won't improve on the messaging experience, but it doesn't drag things down by attempting a full, onscreen keyboard and failing. For messaging, options are slim, with no instant messaging clients built in. SMS works well, but no better than you'd expect from a basic phone. MMS is available, an improvement over the iPhone, but e-mail is not nearly as easy to setup as on Apple's device.
Multimedia - Good
The Prada phone makes a decent attempt to improve the multimedia experience, but most of its improvements are more about the touch interface, than actual features or capabilities of the device. We had trouble maintaining an EDGE connection on the phone, so we couldn't give the Web browser a proper run through. For music, the phone has a nice looking player with a couple skin options, but organization is a problem. Basically, we dumped music files into the "MP3" folder while the phone was in Mass Storage mode, and they showed up in the player. Tags did not come through, and there were no folder or playlist options we could find.
The LG KE850 does have a few multimedia amenities that the iPhone lacks, or cannot match. First, the camera, which boasts a Schneider Kreuznach lens, takes much better pictures, more consistently, than Apple's device. After you press the shutter release, the phone autofocuses, a feature which works well, but we prefer a half-step shutter release, like we saw on the Nokia N95. Pictures look very good, sharp even at 2-megapixels, with generally accurate colors and white balance. Side by side, the same shots looked better on the Prada than the iPhone. Also, the camera allows for video recording at a sort of widescreen QVGA-like resolution.
Second, the Prada phone has games, which take advantage of the touch screen. Though nothing fancy, this isn't a Nintendo DS, after all, the games at least make a solid effort, and provide some diversion. A few wallpaper options on the phone react to touch as well, including a butterfly that flew after our finger everytime we tapped the screen. Additionally, the phone has Bluetooth support for stereo headsets using A2DP. The phone still lacks GPS or 3G, a familiar omission among recent touch screen phones, and a disappointment.
Who's it for?
We thought about adding a "Value" section here, but at $600, we think the Prada phone will have a special place in the market. It isn't a bad phone, and had we not the iPhone already in hand, we might have been more enamored with its innovative, slick touch interface. So, the question may not be whether buyers should aspire to own a Prada phone, but rather whether enthusiasts who snatch up this phone for style and brand recognition have been sold a lemon. Absolutely not. If the price isn't substantial to you, and you prefer Prada (or maybe anything at all) to Apple, the LG KE850 is a cool, unique phone with lots of style and fashion sense. It isn't a convergence device, or a smartphone replacement, but it fits nicely as a sort of Ferrari of phones, a high-end fashion model that performs well on the track and street. It lacks the cupholders and seating of an SUV phone, but it makes up for it in style.
Price and availability
The LG KE850 Prada phone is available from online retailers like Dynamism.com, who sells the phone for $600 unlocked.
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