March 27th, 2007
The Register wore Prada
The Register has a review and lots of pictures of LG's KE850 Prada phone. Apparently, the demo unit was pretty beat up by the time it arrived for testing at The Register. But it was the user interface that wowed reviewer Tony Smith:
Out of the box, the KE850 is a slim - 9.9 x 5.4 x 1.2cm - shiny black monolith of a phone, all 2001: A Space Odyssey meets iPod. Prada's name is embossed in silver letters on the front - LG's logo is relegated to a screen-print on the back…..It's a shame LG didn't used the same material to wrap the handset around its top, base and sides instead of the decidedly cheap-looking chrome-look plastic it picked instead. Even without the handset's rough handling before I got it, this would fail to look stylish. It looks like a toy…..But if the handset's hardware fails to make a fashion statement, its software is a thing of beauty. The KE850 starts up into a them of black icons with white highlights befitting its designer brand….the on-screen iconography is smooth and artistic in a way so few phone UIs are,…The UI's full of surprises like this: right up to the end of the time I had with the phone, I was still finding new tricks you can perform with the UI….if some of the styling's a tad tacky, it hides an inner beauty: one of the slickest, smartest user interfaces around - at least until Apple's iPhone hits the High Street.
From the looks of the Web, the KE850 isn't available in the US (at least I couldn't find any links to it). But since it comes from Europe and its a Tri Band 900/1800/1900 phone, if you can find a used one for sale (they're out there for around $600), it'll should work with the GSM-esque carriers here in the US (T-Mobile and AT&T).
