Thanks to friends with deep pockets who always want to have the latest mobile phone but don't know squat on how to operate them (yes, I'm talking about you, Mark), I've gotten to test the new Prada Phone by LG or better known as the LG KF900 / LG Prada II.

Design

Let me just say that I'll probably buy the LG Prada II just for the Prada Link (Bluetooth watch) alone. Anyways, the LG KF900 sports a 3 inch wide screen with 256k colors. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard adds to the Prada's thickness but it's negligible as it gives the LG Prada II a quite solid feel. There's not much I have to say about the design except that LG could probably have chopped off the length of the phone by pushing their logo and the hardware buttons a little bit closer to the screen, though I guess they needed the length for their QWERTY keyboard and if that's so they could have added a few more inches to their screen.

Features and Performance

I've been saying a lot on my blog that there's no other multi-touch capacitive phone in the market except for the iPhone and Blackberry Storm, well, the LG KF900 is another addition. Being multi-touch capable means you get to a do that pinching thingy like on the iPhone to zoom your pictures in or out. The problem is that, again, it's not as fast or responsive as that of the iPhone but still, it's nice to know that you have a choice when you want to do that pinchy thingy and ti's no longer exclusive to the iPhone. The user interface of the LG Prada II is very customizable which is something that my Omnia lacks. It actually combines a lot of the interface I've seen on other phones. The widgets screen reminds me of the marriage of the Samsung Omnia widgets with that of the HTC Touch Diamond. The LG KF900 also has that shake feature like on the LG Cookie wherein you just shake the phone and your widgets will automatically be arranged. Scrolling through the menus is at times fast and responsive though but I've also experienced some lags like when I press a program button it takes a second before the program launches.

The accelerometer on the LG Prada II is faster than on the LG Cookie though transition is again not as smooth as on the iPhone. Speaking of accelerometer, there's a pretty cool dice game that makes use of the accelerometer. You can play snake and ladders and just shake your phone to mimic actual dice throwing.

Thanks to the multi touch screen, you can also pan in or out of web pages by pinching on the screen. The web browser is kinda slow when you scroll through the pages but it actually loads fast if you're connected to the Internet using HSDPA or a fast WiFI connection.

There's a 5 megapixel camera on the LG KF900 with autofocus, flash, and a Schneider-Kreuznach optics Picture quality is great though the flash doesn't really do much good when indoors. I wasn't able to upload any pics to a PC so my evaluation is based on what the picture quality looks like on the LG Prada II's screen.

Now on to the reason why I would want the LG Prada II, the Prada Link. I think you can also use the Prada Link on the previous version of the Prada phone though I'm not quite sure. Anyways, the LG Prada Link is a Bluetooth watch and not a mobile phone watch so it actually does look like an ordinary digital watch rather than a wall clock strapped to your wrist. The body is stainless steel and the strap made of leather. The cool thing about the LG Prada Link which seems to be missing on other Bluetooth watch is the ability to read text messages! Now that's just totally cool. Imagine you're in a business meeting and you have the phone in your bag or pocket and then without seeming to be rude, you can check your messages by just looking at your watch! Of course, the LG Prada Link also tells time and can silence or reject incoming calls.