The new LG KF900 Prada is the second, updated Prada mobile phone now with 5 megapixel camera, refreshed user interface and touchscreen.
Overview:
LG KF900 Prada features 3-ich touchscreen display, full QWERTY keyboard, along with the virtual standard keyboard and 5 megapixel digital camera. On the top of that, the LG KF900 Prada can record videos in high resolution on play videos, including DVIX straight out of the box. Excellent connectivity and good music player are also to be found on the LG KF900 Prada.
LG KF900 Prada pros:
+ 3-inch 262K-color capacitive touchscreen display with WQVGA resolution
+ Responsive Flash-based interface with multi-touch support
+ Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
+ 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash
+ 720×480 video recording at 30fps
+ Excellent connectivity
+ Comfortable QWERTY keyboard
LG KF900 Prada cons:
- Multi-touch with rather limited use
- No Flash support in the web browser
- Video recording is a letdown
The design:
LG KF900 Prada measures 104.5 x 54.0 x 16.8 mm and weighs 130 grams. The phone is made of high quality plastic with some chrome-finished elements. The front of the phone is dominated by the 3” touchscreen, above which you will find the earpiece, the Prada logo and the video-call camera. Below the screen are the phones hard buttons: Back key, along with the End/Power and Call buttons. The left side of the LG KF900 Prada features the volume rocker, whereas the right side houses the touchscreen know-lock, together with the Launcher/multitasking key and shutter release button. The back of the phone houses the camera lens. Self-portrait mirror and the LED flash. When you slide the phone you will see the full QWERTY keyboard with very comfortable and tactile keys, and in fact slightly better than on the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. The build quality of LG KF900 Prada is quite good. The phone looks outstanding and durable.
Performance:
LG KF900 Prada is equipped with 950 mAh battery which should last for a few days of extensive use. LG KF900 Prada has an improved user interface which now works much faster than on the LG KC 910 Renoir. The 3-inch screen is of very good quality and displays vibrant colors. You can adjust the brightness of the screen, but unfortunately, not contrast. The direct sunlight legibility is not that bad, but also not the best I have seen. The touchscreen on LG KF900 Prada supports multi-touch gestures, just like the Apple iPhone. The one thing that the LG KF900 Prada has, but the iPhone does not is some kind of vibration after you give the phone a command to let you know the phone is doing what it is told. In LG KF900 Prada you can choose from different vibration types and 7 vibration levels.
The phone has quite good messaging and the best thing about it is that you do not really need to configure anything. If you want to set up an e-mail account in most cases it is enough to give your address and password and you are ready to go. Unfortunately, there is the limit of 1 MB when you send mails so you won’t be even able to send the photos from the LG KF900 Prada’s camera. It is a strange decision, since even the LG Renoir had a 2 MB limit.
The phone has a pre-installed document viewer so Word, Excell, Powerpoint, or PDF files will not be a problem. Also the file manager in LG KF900 Prada works really well. Although the phone has some dedicated folders for different file types, they do not have to be in the folders and the phone will still work with them.
With such a large screen and good user interface the web browsing on LG KF900 Prada had to be good, and indeed it is. The web pages are rendered just like on your Mac, or PC, you can open two tabs and save pages in order to read them later on. And the web browser has the ‚find on page’ feature which is also very handy.
Image quality:
The LG KF900 Prada comes with a Schneider-Kreuznach camera lens which can take photos with the maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. You can also record videos at 720 x 480 pixels at 25 frames per second which is quite good for a mobile phone. You can only three shooting modes, but plenty of settings such as white balance, ISO, macro mode and so on. Unfortunately the image quality is only about average, with little fine detail and poor contrast.
Menus / ease of use:
The LG KF900 Prada has a flash based user interface which makes it very eye-candy. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer the screen auto rotates. The LG KF900 Prada has three distinct homescreens that you can switch between just with the swipe of fingers. Apart from that the main menu and the overall menu structure in LG KF900 Prada is very similar to the one found in the LG KC 910 Renoir. At the bottom of the screen there is a bar with four, non configurable shortcut keys. The main menu is divided in four tabs so it is quite easy to grasp.
The phonebook can store up to a 1000 contacts with multiple fields for address, a few phone numbers, memo and so on. You can group contacts as well as assign ringtones and images. Actually, the LG KF900 Prada has a very similar phonebook to the one found on the LG KC 910 Renoir.
Selected LG KF900 Prada features and specifications:
Network (2G) GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900 / GSM 850
Network (3G) HSDPA 2100 / HSDPA 900
Form factor Slider
Antenna type Internal
Display
Type Graphical
Coloured Yes, TFT touchscreen, 262K colors
Size 240 x 400 pixels
- Full QWERTY keyboard
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
Memory
Numbers in phone 1000
Received calls 30
Outgoing calls 30
Lost calls 30
Shared memory 60 MB
- microSD (TransFlash) up to 8GB
- Photocall
Ringtones
Polyphonic ringtones Yes, 64
Ringtone profiles Yes
- MP3
Networking
HSDPA speed 7.2 Mbps
GPRS Yes, Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps
EDGE Yes, Class 10, 236.8 kbps
HSCSD Yes
WLAN Yes, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
USB Yes, 2.0
Bluetooth Yes, 2.1 with A2DP
WAP Yes
Browser Yes, WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Email client Yes
- Instant Messaging
Features
Vibration Yes
SMS Send / Receive
MMS Send / Receive
Camera Builtin, 5 MP, 2592×1944 pixels, autofocus, flash, video (720×480@30fps), secondary videocall camera
Java Yes, MIDP 2.0
Games Yes, (changeable)
Clock Yes
Alarm Yes
Calculator Yes
Calendar Yes
Voice memo Yes
T9 Yes
Multiple numbers / contact Yes
Handsfree Yes
FM Radio Yes
- MP3/WAV/AAC/AAC+/WMA/RA/AMR player
- DivX/MPEG4 video player
- Document viewer(.xls, .doc, .ppt, .pdf)
- Photo/video editor
Standard Battery
Type Li-Ion
Amperage 950 mAh
Standby time GSM: 400h
Talk time GSM: 3h
Other recently reviewed mobile phones:
LG KS360, Samsung M7500 Emporio Armani, Nokia E63, LG KC 910 Renoir, Sony Ericsson G705, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, Samsung L700, Nokia N85, Sony Ericsson T700.