The touch interface, however, is generally capably implemented, with LG continuing to keep things mostly straightforward and easily manageable with simple finger-swipe action on the spacious screen, and haptic feedback confirming presses.

The home screen set-up has a novel three-way view you can swipe between with a sideways stroke of the finger, like turning a page. One is a clear uncluttered standby display, another offers a user-definable set of shortcut touch icons onscreen, while the third allows you to set up onscreen widgets by dragging and dropping apps from a selection in a pop-out widgets toolbar at the bottom of the display.

Like the Cookie, the handy widgets are limited to seven mini apps that can be activated and used with a couple of taps - world clock, calendar, clock, memo, music player, radio and image gallery. But there's a lot of scope for tailoring your shortcuts page.

Speedy navigation

Along with the Multi-tasking button and keyboard screen shortcuts, the Prada II provides plenty of ways to get to your favourites without entering the main menu system. Not that it's difficult to use, mind – navigation is very logical and intuitive.

At the bottom of the home screen are four virtual hotkeys for essentials that don't change when you switch between home pages – phone numberpad, contacts, messaging, and main menu.

Tapping the row of status info at the top of the display also pulls up more detailed information on network connection, memory, battery, etc., plus further quick-start options for the music player, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – which can be very useful when looking for quick connections.

Tapping into the main menu, it's familiar form from LG's recent touchscreen models. A column of four category icons appears on the right of the screen; a press of any of these changes the main screen grid of options to reflect that particular category – Communicate, Entertainment, Utilities or Settings.

It's a well-worked system that makes it quick and easy to locate the functions you're after with just a few presses. Once you choose a category, you can navigate the sub menu options with a scroll or press of options in a quite easy to follow way.

There's sufficient room on the display to scroll around or select options without worrying about mis-pressing or finger-straying errors. It's by no means as smooth and slick a user interface as the iPhone's benchmark-setting touch control system, but it does its job effectively enough.

Picture gallery

One grumble we did have was with the frustrating text message touchscreen option - although this can be got around easily enough by using the Qwerty keyboard instead.

Problem is, the onscreen alphanumeric keys are squeezed into the left portion of the display, with too close control options running down the right next to the 3, 6, 9 buttons – making it too susceptible to annoying finger-slip errors and mode changes mid-typing. Other than that, though, we found it quite a satisfactory touch interface.

What's more, LG has implemented a pinch-to-zoom iPhone-style multi-touch option for looking at images in the phone's gallery, and for zooming in and out of webpages on the device's full internet browser. Using thumb and forefinger to zoom in or out by bringing together or pulling apart on a pic or webpage, this works almost effortlessly and adds a pleasing touch element to the fairly straight control system.

Camera action

The camera itself is a decently performing 5-megapixel shooter. It doesn't have the full firepower of the Renoir's 8-megapixel top-of-the-range shooter, but it can produce finely detailed, high quality images with good colour reproduction.

It automatically flips into side-ways camera-alike mode when the camera's fired up. The touch user interface is easy to get to grips with, thanks to a combination of icons and pop up lists of options within the settings options.