LG Prada Review - Software

Alfredo Padilla
Published on June 25, 2007 Comment on this

OS (4.0)
The LG Prada runs a proprietary operating system. The interface is very simple and is of course tailored for the Prada's touch screen interface. Icons on the screen are large and easy to hit with a finger, and menus are generally short and straightforward. There is also some consistency across the interface as most programs will have three buttons at the bottom of the screen, one of which is almost always the back button and another is almost always a menu button. We found using the operating system to be generally simple, with our biggest concern being that the text entry system is a little confusing. Our score for proprietary operating systems tops out at 5.0, with higher scores reserved for phones that run "smart" operating systems like Windows Mobile or Symbian.

Home Screen Score (5.0)

The Home Screen of the LG Prada displays a clock in the middle, which can be moved around simply by touching it and dragging it around. At the top of the screen are indicators for things like battery life and signal strength. At the bottom are shortcuts to access the main menu, dial screen, messaging and address book. In practice it works fairly well, although power users may want the ability to add or change shortcuts. You can set any photo as the wallpaper on the home screen however, of course this is a standard feature on phones and we would have been surprised to see its lack. Overall the home screen does a solid job of providing users with important information and quick access to often used features.

Extensibility (1.5)
The LG Prada is not a smart phone, so you cannot load native third party applications as you can with Windows Mobile, BlackBerry or Symbian devices. You can load Java applications, we succeeded in using Opera Mini, however the interface obviously causes problems as the Prada lacks any kind of directional pad or soft keys, which most Java programs use. Instead the Prada provides on screen controls that are not very well implemented, with some elements laying on top of each other and confusing responses. This leads us to give the Prada only half our standard points in this area.

Customizability (2.0)
The LG Prada includes themes that allow you to change the look and feel of the interface, although the changes are really only skin deep. The colors and icons change, but nothing about the actual user interface changes. There is also no way to change things like font type or size, which is a problem for those who have poor eyesight. Finally the Prada does not allow you to customize menus, the way icons are arranged on the home screen or the shortcut keys. Overall not a very impressive showing for customizability.

OS Responsivness (5.0)
We found the operating system on the LG Prada to be responsive most of the time. There were a couple of notable exceptions, for example there was some lag when trying to get a song or video playing. We also had occasional problems with the touch screen interface failing to recognize our touches. That being said, we were actually surprised at how well the interface handled most situations, and our problems were isolated to text entry or screens with large numbers of fields. The simple truth though is that this touch screen interface just isn't as fast to respond as phones that use real buttons and directional pads.

Gaming (4.17)

We were pleased to see that the LG Prada comes loaded with several full versions of fun games. Our favorite was virus, a game in which you try to destroy viruses by tapping them on the screen as they move about, teleport and put up shields to defend themselves. This game is not complicated, but is a good way to kill some time and shows how the large touch screen can be used to good effect. Of course traditional games that require a directional pad aren't going to be nearly as functional on the Prada. You may be able to install some java games, but since they aren't developed for touch screen devices you will run into problems using them. This means that if you're not happy with the built in games, you're probably out of luck.

Browser Features (5.0)

The browser on the LG Prada is very basic, supporting standard html and wap pages, as well as images, 168 bit encryption and cookies. It does not support more advanced features like javascript or frames. If you are looking for a more fully featured browser you may want to try Opera Mini, although the controls are a little difficult to deal with as we've mentioned before.

Browsing Interface (3.0)

The browsing interface on the LG Prada is very limited, and doesn't take advantage of the touch screen interface to any large extent. Instead of interacting via the touch screen with the web page as you can in Windows Mobile Professional devices or the upcoming iPhone the Prada makes you use up, down, left and right on screen buttons to move from link to link, as you would on a regular phone that has a directional pad instead of a touch screen. This makes moving about web pages both slow and frustrating. This is further accentuated by the fact that pages are not shrunk to fit on the screen, forcing you to do a lot of scrolling to get around. We don't recommend browsing to anything but mobile web pages on the Prada.

The history in the browser is a simple chronological list of the pages you have visited. History is not saved between sessions. Bookmarks are again very simple with no support for folders, however you can edit existing bookmarks. You cannot reorder them however, and they are organized in the order created rather than alphabetically as you would expect. As always you have a menu button available in the lower left corner, and as in other applications the menu options are few and to the point. No advanced options here. The settings only allow you to clear the cache and history. We were not very happy with the browser on the Prada because it doesn't make good use of the touch screen and provides only limited functionality. Frankly, browsing is just painful.

Browser Access (8.0)
To test how easy it is to access the browser on the Prada we counted how many steps it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we have visited Wirelessinfo.com. We use steps here instead of a timed test to ensure that network issues are taken out of the equation. Entering the web address is counted as a single step. The Prada took five steps to browse to our site. This is a solid score for a phone, better than the LG Chocolate's ten steps or the Nokia N95's seven steps. It is the same as the T-Mobile Wing or Helio Ocean. The browser is found on the first tab when you enter the main menu, which helps the Prada in this test.

Calculator (9.0)

The LG Prada includes an excellent calculator application. When you first enter it you are faced with a simple on screen calculator with a keypad, access to simple arithmetic functions and a few extras like 1/x and parentheses. However you will notice in the bottom let where the menu key is usually found a key that looks like a graph. Pressing this key will give you access to many more advanced functions, including things like square roots, trigonometric functions and logs, amongst others. This type of functionality for a cell phone calculator is almost unheard of. Those looking for a basic scientific calculator for school might want to invest in the Prada instead and gain additional functionality.

Alarm (6.0)

The alarm clock on the Prada provides solid functionality. You can only create a single alarm at a time, however we were pleased to see that you can have the alarm go off once, every day, Mon-Fri, or Mon-Sat. You can also choose to have it go off in 10, 20, 30 or 60 minutes from the current time. You can choose the ringtone that is used for the alarm, including any song you have loaded on the phone, and you can add a text note to remind you of something when it goes off. For a regular phone the alarm on the Prada is very good, and it even blows away the alarm found on Series 60 smart phones.

Document Software (4.0)

The LG Prada includes document viewers for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. You can drop files into the Documents folder and they will be available under My Stuff. We were actually a little surprised to see this support as we had absolutely no luck viewing attachments to email messages. It seems the limitation is in the email program, not the device's capabilities.

Other Software (0.0)
The LG Prada includes a few extra programs that we haven't covered, including a world clock and unit converter. Although these can be useful for travelers, their not significant enough for us to award additional points.

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