Not that I'm bragging now, (as if) but part of my job involves me interacting and entertaining celebrities, in fact pandering to their every whim. To have that keep up with the Jones' status they issued me with the LG Prada phone, a new ultra groovy slim line phone. I was a little reluctant to engage in the use of this phone, the combination of this dainty phone and my thumping fingers does not bode well for the survival of this phone. Dainty though this phone may look, it's far from a soft touch as I discovered having launched it across the floor on numerous occasions; but as usual I'm ahead of myself let's get down to the phone.

So with my LIVE Prada phone I enter the world of touch sensitive screens, four little buttons on the bottom section of the screen allow you to make basic selections. The first is menu, the second phone (for dialling direct numbers), third up is text messaging, and finally your contacts. Getting used to pushing the screen can be annoying because at first you go over into the next option, but after 20 or 30 goes you get more precise. You finally start getting the options you want.

With the Prada phone everything is new; it's like having your very first mobile again and being unsure how it all works. At first the phone can be more annoying than anything else, a text message takes so long that you more often than not (at first) wished you had not bothered. And this is an issue that those with little patience will never get over; I can imagine many of these phones returning to retailers because their new owners can't get their head round it.
Even making calls to automated lines (especially when setting up your phone for the first time) creates its own dilemmas. Once you dial the onscreen keypad disappears and it took me ages trying to figure out how to get it back, how frustrating it was making that set up call that activated everything on the phone, and I could not even figure out through the manuals how to bring the keypad back up. So for those of you experiencing the same push the bottom button on the left hand side of the phone.

Another flawed issued is the 2.0 mega pixel camera, which despite boasting the Schneider Kreuznach name could be a lot better, while other phones have moved up to 3.0 or even 5.0 mega pixels, the Prada phone stays in the past. And the zoom option is almost a non entity, looking the same pretty much after zoom as it did before. That being said the picture quality is as good as it possibly could be for this standard.

If you like games you won't like the Prada phone, the 4 built in games are very basic almost like the ZX81 (for those over 30) equivalent of a mobile game. The sounds that accompany the game are likely to get you murdered if on a bus or train, and unfortunately they trigger off before you get chance to silence them, it's that old finger nails down the blackboard approach to gaming. Having looked really hard I have been unable to find any other games to go onto the phone, this is quite sad. The included games are Halloween Fever - A kind of Tetris style hybrid game. Photo Puzzle - which mixes up a photo and gets you to try and put the picture back together again. Virus - A blast the blob games that's instructions need much to be desired. And finally Pipe - A favourite on many phones where you have to connect some pipework to avoid flooding.

When using WAP access I find that many options are completely disabled to Prada users, and typically enough it's the options that you would want to use rather than the ones you would not.

Voice calls are very clear, but apparently I don't sound anything like me to listeners on the other end, which may or may not have its bonuses. At times the conversations from your end of the phone sound so clear that it's almost as if you are in the same room as the person you're talking too.

The Prada phone comes on both Pay As You Go, or on Contract, on contract its free with most networks, but on Pay As You Go the cheapest route seems to be with Virgin, but don't expect much change from £300 if any at all.