LG Prada 3.0 deals & review

As a high performance fashionista’s phone, the LG Prada 3.0 isn’t cheap. What price beauty? The guts of £500, if you must know. Any phone that bears the prestigious Prada name never was going to be cheap, but thankfully this LG handset has brains to go with its beauty. While not mitigating its hefty price altogether, buyers can rest assured that they’ll be acquiring a fast, functional phone - and one that looks damn good to boot. The phone runs on a modified version of Android Gingerbread that is equipped with icons that convey the look and feel of the Prada brand. It’s a nice touch, and one that cool cats will appreciate.

Minimal and elegant, this exquisitely slim model is finished with Saffiano leather detailing and curved edges. An anorexically-thin 8mm body with discrete buttons that are subtly embedded on the side of the handset. The power button is situated on the top corner and lights up for added effect. Ultimately, this sleek handset is all about suave design, with its black and white theme and personalised widgets and icons.

The spacious 4.3inch IPS LCD touch screen is bright and easy to read. Viewing multimedia and browsing the web is a pleasure on the Prada 3.0 The 8MP rear-view camera offers great detail and resolution. Easy to use, it’s complemented by a 1.3MP front-facing camera. There’s also a built-in voice recorder, Bluetooth and - best of all - NFC. The Near Field Communication technology is combined with GPRS and EDGE connections. As you’d expect for a phone of this quality, there’s both 3G and wi-fi, with claimed connection speeds of up to 21Mps. Sat-nav, a stereo radio with RDS and an MP3 player complete the Prada 3.0’s impressive array of features.

The handset is fitted with a dual core 1GHz Cortex A9 processor. In operation, it proves to be a speedy little number that works well with the Android Gingerbread OS. The Prada 3.0 is perfectly comfortable with multi-tasking, so feel free to run as many applications as you like. A generous 8GB of internal memory allows for storage of a multitude of songs and other multimedia content.

This handset might boast its own proprietary Prada icons, but in reality this phone is very much like a jazzed up version of the LG Optimus 3D. This isn’t a bad thing however; like the Optimus 3D, the Prada 3.0 is a pleasure to use. The menus are sensibly laid out and the touchscreen is quick and responsive. The internal RAM keeps things ticking over nicely; web browsing in particular is a slick experience, with little lag when it comes to loading pages.

At this price point, the most obvious rivals to the Prada 3.0 are top-of-the-range offerings from Apple and Samsung. The iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus command a similar price and offer an impressive array of features. Other obvious competitors include the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Motorola RAZR, both of which have their own unique aesthetics.