Oh yes, the LG Prada 2 (KF900) review

This will be the most detailed post I've ever written about a gadget. I've even included a bonus complaint email that was sent to this customer service of LG. Maybe after reading it, one would shun LG products forever. In fact, I'm not gonna watch TV ever again (my TV set is a product of LG's but damnit, I just caught Reunion Dinner on TCS 8)!

To date, this is one of the most shittiest smartphone I've ever used. Maybe I've gotten used to my Nokia E90 which was absolutely versatile and could almost replace my laptop anytime, just that it lacks a mouse. Initially I wanted to sell off E90 for this phone but after having the Prada for almost 2 weeks, I guess I'll be keeping E90 for good! This post serves as a reminder to others not to buy anything on impulse, especially technical gadgets that dig out a sizeable amount of your savings.

Box contents

Unboxing

The thing I like about Prada is their simple yet elegant designs. The phone satisfies the above 2 conditions which is why it appeals to me. Not only that, the QWERTY keypad is considered a must have these days when MSN rules the IM community. My eagerness to own such a 'high-tech' apparatus costs me a whopping $1288 (w/o contract). Never mind about the Prada Link, an additional Bluetooth Headset was thrown in by the shop that sold me this phone, LG Concept @ Vivocity. I suspect only LG headsets can work with this phone, my Nokia headset could not even be detected from it!

Clockwise from top-left: Free Bluetooth HS, Box with USB Cable/Travel Charger/Handsfree with Full remote control/Manual, LG PC Suite installation disc, Cloth in an envelope, Handset and Saffiano Leather case.

Sadly, the Saffiano leather case that comes with it is rather short, exposing the top part of the phone. The shortfall is visible from the picture above by comparing them side by side. If only they could enable the leather case to cover the whole phone! With the phone's head peeking out from the case, it looks absolutely like a penis with the foreskin slightly retracted.

Tada! I have a Peradanis (Prada Penis)!

Only later did I realise that if the top part is being covered, the earpiece would be blocked and when the phone rings, it sounds like it's being kidnapped.

"mffRing mffRing !"

Lightweight at 130 grams

Handsfree Headset

Pretty standard for headsets nowadays to come with a full remote control. 3.5 mm earphone plugs are welcomed by the remote control, so that means most earphones in the market could fit.

PC Suite

The PC suite is easy to use. Confirm can sync with Outlook! Memos, Calendar appointments and To-Dos get transferred as per normal, but seems like you can't create new folders for the Memos and thus, the whole list gets displayed. Imagine having to swipe your finger bottom-up continuously just to find that important note and other people will think that you have a 双天自尊 game installed. I haven't tried configuring my office mail account though so I can't advice you on the feasibility of a mobile office here.

Hardware

The chassis is made of plastic I presume, having the sides coated with chrome plating which might peel off easily if you drop the handset onto some rough surface. Sliding action is smooth, but kind of shaky as the threads to guide the top housing are not very tight fitting.

Detailed view of various parts around the unit.

Text input/viewing

Gay screensaver !

QWERTY

Those who are very used to using shortcuts (i.e Ctrl C, V, A) on their PC's keyboard will be disappointed at LG's version. There is absoultely no programmed shortcuts in this keypad! To make matters worst, when you are trying to select a word or sentence by holding the 'Shift' button and pressing the navigation key backwards, no word gets selected!

A remedy for this is that instead of strangling the keypad to make it select some words or sentences, you may use the finger-swiping method to highlight desired words and then click on the top left hand icon, and select copy. And yet another lousy functional design is that when you paste and wish to select another field of words, you can't find the option 'Copy' in the list of options!! That's it, you get to paste the first choice over and over again. Damn. I want to box the programmer sia.

The on-screen SMS is really a pain to use, you'd wished you'd have a stylus somewhere. But styluses don't work on this unit as the screen only responds to human touch (rather horny piece of thing eh?). The virtual buttons are so small and tightly packed together! Even though there is vibrating feedback, it does not suffice to a happy sms'ing experience.

Initially it took me 4 seconds to type 'Fark you, Aunty ! ' on the QWERTY and 1 whole minute to type the same sentence on the touchscreen. On the touchscreen my thumb keeps hitting the Shift button or the wrong word, and the results are not very encouraging. On the QWERTY, there is no exclamation mark! Sometimes I do not know whether to curse my thumb or the small numerical buttons. So for now, if you ask me whether I'd prefer the QWERTY or touchscreen.

I'd rather call that Aunty up to kan (scold) her.

They got a praying mantis to test their products. Fark.

The pre-installed Picsel Universal File viewer for PDF, Excel and Words can't be used to edit documents. Not only that, panning the documents up and down needs some patience. Firstly, the fonts can only be read by the praying mantis so you'll have to enlarge the fonts. Secondly, when you pan the document, you will need to keep your thumb consistently on the screen as I think the reader is a little retarded. So by the time you have adjusted the document to a comfortable viewing size, you will totally forget what you are finding in the first place.

Some Java-based applications I found on the web. "IMHere9" for MSN and "Microsoft Word" work fine, and I haven't tested the others yet. Wou can use Microsoft Word to create words documents but trust me, I had a better experience with E90's proprietary Document editor.

Screenshot of words editing with "Microsoft Word"

Better not rely on the Prada for work. Get an E90 instead man!


Aesthetics

This department is the only thing that the KF900 can score in. It is the only reason you would love about the phone. There are actually 3 standby screens, and to switch to each of them requires just a horizontal finger swipe. This function is also present in HTC smartphones.

'Rotating' the standby screen.

To identify in which standby screen you are at, you may look at the 3 dots on the screen, with the centre screen as the main. You may set your personal wallpaper here but it will not appear in the other 2 standby screens.

In the 1st standby screen, you can customize up to 9 shortcuts of any applications in the phone. In the 2nd standby screen, it has up to 7 predefined shortcuts, including one for the Gallery which is a squarish icon with the word 'Prada' on it. You can either choose to 'keep' the icons by dragging them onto the bar below, or sort them in any order on the screen.

To auto align, just shake the phone!

Calendar in Month view

As the phone comes with multitouch functionality, browsing and enlarging photos are a breeze. The web browser works pretty much like your IE 7, just that your window tab is limited to 2 and you need to remember to disable your WIFI after surfing. There is no FlashLite, which means viewing Youtube videos is impossible. I'm sure the fix will come pretty soon as my colleague's Renoir had this problem before but a recent fix corrected the issue.

Web browser's screen too small?

Full screen view available. Phew

Resize the window by 'pinching' the screen a la the iPhone way.

Bugs

Some bugs which really annoy me are the Browser Beetle and the Blue Screen Ladybird. Imagine this, after surfing my blog and when trying to check out mien's blog, my phone will run out of memory!

Browser Beetle bugging me to close the window.

And when you touch the 'OK' button, you'll get kicked out of the internet browser! I never had a problem with my E90 so I think it's very sad that they could not allocate a bigger memory to the cache.

Blue Screen Ladybird was even more scheming. She appears when I used my handsfree to listen to MP3s, and when I forward an MP3 song. And you can't do anything to revive the situation but to remove the battery and boot the phone up again!

HOW CAN ANYONE TOLERATE THIS ???

This image is definitely not Photoshopped !

Multimedia

The phone boasts a 5MP camera with Schneider Kreuznach lens which isz shcNothing to be proukd aboutz becrauz Kamera Phone nowadayz comes wiz at least 5 megapixders. Erhem. The LED flash is not as powerful as a Xenon flash but pictures taken are still quite decent. Another consoling factor is that the flash power is better than the E90's. See below for a comparison.

Prada

E90

The Prada can even capture the shadow created by my lappie. Maybe because the shutter speed for the Prada is slower? I'm not really a seasoned photographer so I am not sure how to adjust the camera. Overall the image quality is still acceptable for a well lit room but not so good in dark areas.

Taken at the Helipad entrance.

The music player is quite ok, with 5 built in equalizer settings that sounds quite good to me, despite the fact that it is already such a disappointing phone. But I am not going to use it just yet, until a fix for the Bluescreen Beetle is available.

Music player and Radio available in the 3rd screen as widgets.

Summarizing my review, I am very disappointed in LG's product. The design and some functions shout hi-tech, but the applications and office capabilities do not match up to other more established brands that I know of. Imagine the phone suddenly restarting when you switch off the WIFI! I'm also shocked that the alarm does not work consistently, because I realised that during some days, it doesn't ring and my Mum had to wake me up in the morning before I head to work.

As a smartphone user, I find that the amount I've paid for this phone is highly overpriced. Thus, I've sent an email to LG support for advice. Below is my actual email:

Please see if anything can be done to improve the functionality of the phone.

1. Adding a recipient to sms - The phone is not smart enough to find the closest match when I keyed in the first few letters of the recipients. In the end, the sms gets stuck in the Outbox. I'd have to open it up again, FIND the recipient and then send it again. That's way too troublesome.

2. Touch recognition is TOO sensitive. Need to have the versatility to edit the sensitivity. Like the Renoir.

3. Battery life is pathetic. Please send me a battery with better performance or some solutions!

4. The web browser ALWAYS says 'Internal Memory Full' or something like that, and then rudely closes down my web browser. Is there any way at all to allocate this cache to point to the memory card? It is very very frustrating even surfing the first webpage.

5. No FlashLite!

6. Sometimes in the middle of a call, if I adjust the volume, the phone gets unlocked momentarily and my ear will accidentally press the 'loudspeaker activation' button and the voice of my caller will be blasted into my ear! How could anyone tolerate that? Why did it not occur to anyone that there's the risk of the ear touching the loudspeaker button? Why do you all have to put it so high up on the screen??

7. Please give me the ability to add folders in the Calendar, Memos, Documents and To-Dos! It's so hard to locate something!

8. The qwerty is practically useless. No shortcuts? Like Ctrl C, V, Z, A etc? Even when you use your finger to highlight a whole chunk of text, it's still very difficult as the screen will move up and down. Isn't there something like holding shift down and selecting one part of the text to highlight all the paragraph?

In summary, I am utterly dismayed at having to tolerate such nonsense that the phone is giving me. The only good thing I can say is that the gallery is nice to use (and sometimes when I open up the gallery there is actually nothing being displayed when I have numerous pictures in my card) because of the scrolling function.

Someone please answer my prayers soon before I head down to VivoCity and demand a refund. I suggest that your technical team come up with solutions fast because I believe such functions will bring down your company's image. Smartphone indeed! I'm a user of Nokia E90 and I feel that this Prada KF900 is such a shame. Even an old Nokia 9500 or 6600 wins it hands down.

And I got a reply from them a few days later.

"Dear Customer, I would recommend you to bring to service center to fix it. Some of the problem you are facing might be software issue. Our technican will assist you. Thankyou

Regards"

What service attitude! Another Taichi master. They should just rename 'LG Online support' to 'LG Taichi Center". I tell you, even their software update tool is super hard to understand.

Er, shouldn't the ' : ' be a ' ! ' ??

Even when it claims that there's a new software version but when I tried to update my phone, a pop-up screen will say that there's no new version for my phone!

Sigh, why am I so suay?? Luckily I haven't sold my E90! E90 rules! For now, I'll just have to tolerate the nonsense until a software upgrade is available. Keeping my fingers crossed!