Tech companies collaborating with well known fashion brands aren’t new. We’ve seen the results of such partnerships in the form of the Dolce & Gabbana Motorola phone, the Porsche Design P´9981 and of course, the first two LG Prada devices. Today, we’re going to be reviewing the third offspring of that glorious collaboration – the LG Prada 3.0.
While the LG Prada 3.0 bears the name of one of Italy’s posh lifestyle brands, the device doesn’t exude the same luxurious feel. Don’t misunderstand; the LG Prada 3.0 is still a top-tier Android device, and its design reflects this – 8.5mm thickness, metallic accents around the bezel, elegant spun aluminium camera and power buttons on top.
Unfortunately, if it wasn’t for the large, Prada branding on the back and front, you’d assume that this particular device was just another regular, hi-end device. You do get a Prada’s trademark Saffiano pattern at the back of the device, so there’s that.
The LG Prada 3.0 bears a 4.3-inch NOVA IPS display that has a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The display has an impressive 830 nits of luminance, which makes it, as my friend delicately puts it, a damn neon sign, especially in dark environments. The LG Prada 3.0 is powered by a relatively sedate dual-core 1GHz Cortex A9, which means it’s not the fastest smartphone on the block. Imaging duties are taken care of by a 8 megapixel camera on the back, with a smaller, front facing camera on the front for video calling duties.
What really sets the LG Prada 3.0 apart from other devices that have similar specs is the custom UI loaded into the device. While the LG Prada 3.0 still uses Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), LG had taken it upon themselves to heavily modify the UI to match the subdued elegance of the device. The result is probably one of the best looking custom UI’s I’ve seen in a while.
What LG did wasn’t extremely hard or complicated – just white icons on a black background – but the way they managed to integrate it into the whole feel of the device just feels right.
I already knew that the LG Prada 3.0 isn’t the fastest smartphone currently in the market, but I still wanted to know where exactly it lies when it comes to performance. As always, AnTuTu was my benchmark of choice, and the LG Prada 3.0 performed well. Real-world performance basically mirrored the synthetic scores, with the LG Prada 3.0 performing well during its time with me.
As a phone, the LG Prada 3.0 performed well – both outgoing and incoming calls were excellent, with nary a dropped call during our time with it. It also had better than average battery life compared to faster devices, and managed to last about a day and a half with semi-moderate use, a feat that a lot of other smartphones struggle to achieve.
That doesn’t mean that the LG Prada 3.0 is perfect. One of the things I really had an issue with the thing was its keyboard. I don’t know if it’s just tiny or a result of a different layout, but I found myself misspelling text messages more than usual. That, combined with the lack of an autocorrect feature made for some really slow typing.
At first glance the LG Prada 3.0 may seem that it just relies on the Prada brand to sell itself, but a deeper look reveals something more. It’s a solid smartphone that performs well, and even with the small niggles it’s still a particularly fine smartphone for stylish people. The device retails for about Php 29,990.
What’s Hot:
Elegant, simple design
Awesome custom UI
Extremely bright screen
Good battery endurance
What’s Not:
Needs more premium materials in construction
Small virtual keyboard, no autocorrect
Middling processor
A bit expensive
Bottomline:
It’s certainly not the fastest nor the thinnest, but the LG Prada 3.0 still brings something unique to the table.
Buymeter: 4.0
Tech Specs:
- Operating System: Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
- CPU: Dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9
- LCD size: 4.3 inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen
- Physical Dimensions: 127.5 x 69 x 8.5 mm
- Weight: 138 g
- Band: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900, HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
- Internal memory: 8 GB storage, 1 GB RAM, 512 MB ROM, expandable through microSD