Prada Phone by LG 3.0
Diallers are a girl's best friend?
Review Why is black and white classier than colour? And should we want our phones, with their increasingly glorious screens, to mute their rainbow hues? It’s the arrival of LG’s third collaboration with Prada that’s raised these questions – a handset that favours an interface dressed mostly in black and white.
Glamour puss: Prada Phone by LG 3.0
This stylish UI makeover features scores of monochrome shortcut icons that are matched, unsurprisingly, with hardware that’s almost entirely black and white, apart from a gleaming Prada logo and three tiny chrome buttons on the top edge. The Prada logo on the front, by the way, is very subtle. It catches the light on part of the logo at a time, so it gleams like a diamond as you move the phone, instead of the whole word glowing uniformly. There’s classy.
Gingerbread for now, but will support upgrading to Ice Cream Sandwich
The phone oozes elegance. It’s tall and catwalk-slim at just 8.5mm, with a pleasingly tactile back – its texture being Prada's signature Saffiono pattern – which combined with the screen and gloss-edged case all feels very high-end. At 4.3in the display is undoubtedly big and that plain black background is complemented by white outline images for apps. It looks great. Even the weather app has been remodelled in monochromer. There are colour wallpapers available, but they look suddenly rather garish in comparison.
Which leads to a problem when you download an app and feel its colour icon is just too gaudy. No matter, LG has a solution. Hold the shortcut icon and a paintbrush picture appears, revealing a palette of around 80 white line drawn icons you can replace the colour ones with. It’s simple but oddly satisfying. The phone’s build quality is extremely good. No surprise, perhaps, but it feels solid yet light for its size (138g), sturdy but understated.
Menu screens
One more style thing before we get to substance. The lock screen shows time, date and network on what looks like a black background. Change the wallpaper to colour, though, and you realise that this lock screen is a translucent one, so the new wallpaper is gently visible beneath. Ah, it’s the little things.
Next page: Fashion sense
COMMENTS
Why the obsession with upgrading the OS?
Does Android stop working once a newer version is out? Is Android so shit now that you would only buy a device with it on now if they promise to upgrade?
Surely you buy a phone that works as you need it now and has all of or as many as possible of the apps you want then use it?
I don't understand this obsession with upgrading that some Android users have -- I've had phones for a couple of years and never needed to upgrade anything to do what I need. I understand it may be cool to be able to upgrade to the latest shiny but I'd put that at the bottom of the list after it doing what I want it to do at time of purchase.
"Battery life was also a cut above, lasting well over a day"
I like how a battery life that'll span breakfast to bedtime is now considered better than average.
Lucky Goldstar
Hmm - it's a Lucky Goldstar phone!
Doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Probi ng Anal ist
Why would Apple not suing LG have anything to do with LG not suing Apple? Only one could copy the other, and LG being first to market means their product cannot infringe on Apple's design. You can't say the same for Apple though.
Re: Re: Why the obsession with upgrading the OS?
You're saying now that Android doesn't get security fixes for older versions? If what you're saying is correct then I will not be buying an Android phone next as that is negligent to the extreme.
As for it being like a computer -- If I bought a computer with XP on it I wouldn't expect an upgrade to Vista and I suspect most people don't upgrade their computer OS but simply upgrade their computer every 2 to 5 years. I certainly wouldn't expect to have to upgrade my PC's OS in the first two years of ownership which seems to be the longest most people keep phones.
