LG P940 Prada 3.0 smartphone review
LG launches its third smartphone with Prada branding for users keen to make a fashion statement along with their phone calls. Julian Prokaza finds out if this designer-label Android device has the substance to match its style.
The LG P940 Prada 3.0 is a stylish Android smartphone, but it’s overpriced for what it delivers, not least when it comes to the underwhelming battery life. The mere promise of an Android 4 upgrade at some point isn’t particularly compelling either, so there’s little here to make this smartphone stand out beyond the Prada label.
The 480 x 800 resolution makes text look a little on the soft side though, since it equates to just 217ppi (pixels per inch) almost 100ppi less than the iPhone 4/4S.
Although it's unlikely to happen in typical use, placing moderate pressure on the screen glass with a fingertip is enough to cause the liquid crystal layer beneath to distort, which is presumably the result of the glass being a whisker too thin. We doubt the glass will ever break, but it's the first time we've seen this behaviour on a smartphone with a capacitive glass screen.
Case aside, the other acknowledgement of the P940's Prada connection is the custom user interface, whose monochromatic skin for Home screen icons and stock Android apps presumably reflect the crisp, clean ideals of the designer label.
Whether or not using a full-colour display to show information in black and white makes sense is no doubt down to personal taste, but we didn't particularly care for it, not least since it makes app icons difficult to visually differentiate with a quick glance.
There's little other modification to Android on the P940 and the OS runs smoothly, thanks to a 1GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor and 1GB RAM. Overall performance is good too, with Scores of 2723 in the Quadrant Standard synthetic Android benchmark and 2723ms in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark putting it somewhere between the similarly specified Motorola RAZR and Samsung Galaxy S II.
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