LG Prada

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Features
The first thing you'll notice when you turn on the LG Prada is a distinctive start-up sound that was, according to LG, created by Prada and sounds like something from one of the Saw horror movies--you'll want to turn this off straight away.

Once it stops screeching at you, you'll notice that the user interface looks great, with cute icons, and you can customise it to suit your taste. We particularly like the theme that displays a wriggling fish on the start page.

The touchscreen is large, bright and more responsive than those found on touchscreen phones we've previously tested. There's no stylus provided but we didn't feel awkward using our fingers. It works very well when you just need to tap an icon or dial a number, but as with many touchscreen phones, there isn't any tactile feedback when you're texting. This means that you're not always sure if you've pressed the right key or if the screen has registered your tap, which gets frustrating.

The other problem that a touchscreen phone brings is that it can get scratched rather easily and unless you keep the LG Prada in its leather pouch it will become tarnished. It also collects a great deal of grease when you hold it against your ear to make a call, making it look dirty.

There's a video player that supports MPEG-4 and H.263 formats, an FM radio and a music player that supports MP3 and ACC files, among others. The music player feels vaguely like Apple's iTunes and lets you adjust the play mode to repeat and shuffle tracks. One flaw is that there's no built-in 3.5mm jack to let you plug in a pair of standard headphones.

The 2-megapixel camera has an LED photo light and shoots both still pictures and video. We're slightly put out that the camera doesn't have autofocus, but using the large color touchscreen as a viewfinder works well enough.

	The touchscreen interface works surprisingly well, even though there's no stylus.

Unusually, there's a document viewer that supports Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Acrobat files. Documents are reformatted to fit the width of the screen, so there's no need to scroll sideways to read the text. It works, but the small screen means you won't be using it to read War and Peace on the train.

There's an expandable microSD slot for storing all your favorite music and videos, and you get a 256MB card with the phone. Plug the Prada into your computer via a USB cable and you can use it as a mass storage device, which is useful for transferring files around. You can also connect it to other devices using Bluetooth.

A noteworthy but rather gimmicky feature is the world clock, which reminds us of Google Earth, in as much as it displays a globe you can then zoom in on. It looks great on the Prada's screen.

Finally, for such a large-screened handset, you might assume that the LG Prada would be great for browsing the Web, but it's hindered by two factors. The first is that the browser isn't very good--text pops up in the wrong position and images can look squashed. The other issue is that there's no 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity, so it takes a while for pages to download.

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