LG Prada Review - Making/Receiving Calls

Alfredo Padilla
Published on June 25, 2007 Comment on this

Intro
Making/Receiving Calls
Software
Other Features

Dialing Speed (3.41)

To test how easy it is to make calls with the LG Prada we timed how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have dialed a phone number and hit the send key. We repeat this for five different test numbers and take the average for our score. The LG Prada took an average of 5.86 seconds to dial our test numbers. To dial a number you hit the phone icon on the bottom of the screen and use the on-screen keypad to enter the number. The Prada's time does not compare well to phones like the LG Chocolate and Sprint Upstage that have hardware keypads. The Chocolate scored an average of 3.61 seconds while the Upstage took 3.38 seconds on average. Compared to another phone that uses a touch-screen keypad to dial, the T-Mobile Wing, the Prada's time looks a little better, but still wasn't as fast as the Wing's 5.46 second time. Surprisingly it wasn't actually using the keypad that hurt the Prada so much, rather it was the lag we experienced while the keypad was loaded on screen. Of course, you won't be able to dial by feel on the Prada.

Talk and End Buttons (6.0)
The LG Prada's talk and end buttons are located beneath the touch screen flanking a center back button. The buttons both sit on a thin silver strip and are about as wide as a finger. You can find them easily by feel as they sit a little above the surrounding black plastic and provide good tactile feedback when pressed. We would have liked to see the buttons a little larger, but otherwise they fulfill their function well.

Call Management (7.0)

The LG Prada provides solid call management features. You can access your call history directly from the home screen by hitting the send button. This gives you a list of calls made or received with the ability to sort by missed, incoming or outgoing calls. Opening the menu via a touch button at the lower left of the screen you are able to add numbers to contacts and delete some or all of the numbers. Additional call management features can be found by going to the application menu and choosing call history. Here you can access the call lists we already discussed as well as see how much data has been sent or received by the device. There is also a handy tool that allows you to manage call charges for those who are on pre-paid plans. We were very pleased with the quality of the call history on the Prada.

During a call you can hit the lock button to bring up three buttons to access options. The left button mutes the call, the center buttons turns on the speakerphone and the left button opens a menu. From this menu you can access your contacts, place the call on hold, record the call or create a note, amongst other options. We were particularly pleased with the ability to record a call, a feature not often found on cell phones, even advanced smart phones. Pressing the profiles button will bring up the on screen keypad if you should have need of it. The feature set is solid for a regular phone, and we appreciated additional touches like the fact that that the touch screen is turned off unless you activate functions via the profiles or lock key. Overall we found the call management features on the Prada to be good.

Startup to Call (3.64)
We test how quickly you can turn your phone on and make a call when it is completely shut down. We repeat this test five times and then take the average for our score. The LG Prada took an average of 27.46 seconds to complete this process. This is an average time for a regular phone, about the same as the Sprint Upstage's 28.9 second average. It is quite a bit slower than the Helio Ocean however, which posted an excellent time of 9.5 seconds. Compared to media centric smart phones like the T-Mobile Wing or Nokia N95 the Prada does better, with the N95 at 36.4 seconds and the Wing ridiculously long at 62.86 seconds.

Ring Volume (8.46)
To test ring volume we set volume on the phone to maximum and use the loudest ringtone on the device. We then use a sound pressure meter to measure how loud the ring gets in decibels. The LG Prada's ring measured 84.6 decibels. This is about average for a cell phone, similar to the Helio Ocean's 85.4 decibels and above the Sprint Upstage's 80.9 decibels. One thing we noticed was that the Prada's ring increases, starting significantly lower than it's maximum volume and then increasing with each ring. While this might be useful in some situations, it might be a problem if you can't find the phone, as it'll keep getting louder and more irritating until you find it..

Ringtone Customizability (6.0)
We were very pleased to see that you can use any MP3 file on the Prada as a ringtone, whether in the phone memory or on your memory card. We wish that more phone manufacturers added this capability to their music capable handsets. You cannot record your own ringtone, nor can you edit ringtones on the device, but this is not surprising as few phones offer these capabilities.

Non Audio Alerts (10.0)
Non audio alerts on the LG Prada consist of an on screen alert when a call comes in and a vibration alert. The on screen alert fills the entire screen, with a graphic that's impossible to ignore if you're looking at the screen and pertinent information like the incoming number or contact name. The vibrate alert is run of the mill; the vibration is resonably vigirous. You won't have any problem recognizing it in a pants pocket, but may have trouble with it in a jacket pocket or if it's in a bag.

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