LG KF900 Prada Review

The LG Prada that caught the eye when it was launched by LG sometime last year has got a big upgrade and now has a physical QWERTY keyboard apart from other feature additions. The glam factor still rules but the phone has put on weight since it was first introduced.

LG KF900 Prada specifications :

• Dimensions : 104.5 x 54 x 16.8 mm
• Weight : 130 g
• Display : 3″ TFT touchscreen with 240 x 400 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSCSD
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Camera : 5 MP, autofocus and flash
• Other features : Accelerometer, FM Radio, TV Out
• Approx. price : $550

The biggest change has come in the form of a full QWERTY keyboard attached to the Prada. Although its always good to have one but bulkiness and thickness isn’t the USP of the Prada, LG could have done without one. There are other upgrades to media, connectivity and user interface too.

Display, Keyboard and User Interface

The display on the device has remained unchanged and is still a 3″ display with capacitive touch. The quality of the display is good but the sunlight visibility isn’t the best we have seen. The display’s brightness can be adjusted but not he contrast. The resolution is on the lower side and does affect the picture quality. However, the touch works beautifully and there were no hiccups in that regard.

The keyboard has a nice neat layout with sufficient gap between two adjacent keys. The keys are slightly raised from bottom and give enough tactile feedback. The top row keys suffer due to close proximity to top edge. The mode automatically changes to landscape when the keyboard is flipped out. The lighting on the keyboard is adequate for low light conditions. Overall the QWERTY keyboard does a good job, better than Sony Xperia X1.

The user-interface on the device is Flash based developed by LG. The same user interface has been previously used in the older Prada, Viewty etc. The biggest change however comes in te form of multi-touch support which was till now exclusive to the Apple iPhone. The interface has got a performance boost and responds much faster. The menu has fixed layout and the accelerometer changes the orientation but only in selected applications. There are multiple home screens pretty much like the iPhone and you can select the application shortcuts to put on them. The rest of the interface is mostly unchanged and we like the way it is.

Music player and Camera

The music player on the device is good with extensive search options based on artist, genre, album etc. The music player however does not support visualizations but has support for album art. The home screen gets a dedicated widget when the music player is running. The player gets equalizers which were missing in previous versions but still there is no custom equalizer option though. Now there are dedicated buttons for repeat, shuffle, sound. The Prada 2 also has FM Radio with RDS support that can store upto 50 stations. The quality of the music player is great and the sound produced is rich in detail.

The camera has a 5 megapixel sensor and Schneider-Kreuznac lens  a big improvement over the minuscule 2 megapixel sensor in earlier Prada. The interface is same as LG Renoir which was not much appreciated by us but it has some improvements such a full screen mode that make it better. LG fails to utilize the space left at the sides that puts various settings buried deep in to the menu making it less user friendly. The camera has three shooting modes, normal, burst and panorama. The resolution however, decreases successively when the multiple shots are increased by 3, 6 or 9. Other settings include white balance, ISO, exposure compensation, self-timer, color effects etc.

The image quality of the camera is average which is disappointing. The images lack detail and the contrast is also low. Color reproduction is fine but there is a fair bit of noise in the pics. The video recording however completely rocks as it manages to record videos at a high resolution of 720 x 480 @ 25 fps. The videos have some problem with getting the aspect ratio right, but that should be corrected in future firmware updates.

Web Browsing and Organiser

Browsing on the Prada 2 is a nice experience on its 3″ capacitive touchscreen that has multi-touch support too. It has the legendary pinch to zoom gesture but it takes quite some time to zoom in and out unlike the iPhone. The controls pop up at bottom that auto hide after a few seconds and a single tap on the screen brings them up again. Orientation is changes automatically, thanks to the accelerometer. The browser has tab support but is limited to two tabs only. The browser can search for words and shows the first result along with total number of results, a feature missing from MobileSafari.

The organiser on Prada 2 has all the necessary softwares to help you manage your time efficiently. Calendar offers both monthly and weekly views. One can schedule alarms a week in advance. To-Do application manages your tasks efficiently. Date finder is a small and neat application that finds the day, date after say 11 days from now. Calculator, Unit Converter, World Clock, Voice recorder are some of the other applications on the Prada 2.

Pros :

• 3″ capacitive touchscreen
• Physical QWERTY keyboard
• Multi-touch support
• Good video recording
• Great flash-based interface

Cons :

• Bulky
• No GPS
• Average camera

Final Thoughts

The LG KF900 Prada is definitely an improvement over the earlier Prada with multi-touch support, physical keyboard and higher resolution camera. It has a nice Flash-based interface that has been optimised for touch experience. The display is gorgeous and has multi-touch support too. But it does miss out on GPS and the quality of the camera is average. Video recording however is great with a resolution of 720 x 480.The web browser is a treat to work on and has tab support and search option too. Overall the Prada 2 is a much improved phone that delivers the goods. It does leave room for some improvement that we can expect when Prada 3 gets released.

Rating : 4/5