Nokia has released more details on its first netbook, the Booklet 3G. The Booklet 3G is a pretty stylish piece of kit, but aside from that there's some pretty interesting goodies under its aluminium bonnet.

As you probably know by now, the Booklet 3G is based on Intel's Atom Z530 and has 1GB of memory, like most netbooks. However, the rest of the spec is anything but your dreary dose of cheap netbookish stuff. It's a fanless design, and Nokia opted for a 120GB, 1.8-inch 4200rpm hard drive to save space, weight and help out with the thermals. Of course, 1.8-inch drives are rather slow and pricey,but we're guessing Nokia will offer an SSD option at some point.



Another thing that sets it apart from the competition is the 10.1-inch 1280x720 screen screen and its removable 16-cell 56.8 Wh Li-Ion prismatic battery, which should provide enough juice for 12 hours of computing. Neat, but the big battery and aluminium chassis add quite a bit of weight, and at 1250g the Booklet 3G is not very light, especially considering it's just 19mm thick.

As you would expect from a Nokia, connectivity isn't an issue. Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, 802.11 b/g/n and optional 3G support should meet anyone's needs. You also get HDMI, A-GPS and an accelerometer.

Basically the Booklet 3G sounds like a very nice machine indeed. It's stylish, thin, silent and offers immense battery life, and its build quality will probably be second to none. However, at €570 or just over $800, it's mind bogglingly expensive for a netbook, no matter how good it is. There's still hope Nokia could use its pull with telcos to offer it under some more reasonable subsidized prices or long term payment plans.