Computers have been edging their way into the mobile market for a while now, with the PC (or Mac)-like experience the holy grail of smartphones everywhere. Nokia is obviously in the mood to fight back, and has launched its first computer, the Nokia Booklet 3G. It runs on the new Windows 7, but this ‘mini-laptop’ is unmistakeably a Nokia. You notice it as soon as you want to go online – access to the web is via a 3G SIM card.

 

Style and handling for Nokia Booklet 3G

 

The Nokia Booklet 3G measures a handbag-friendly 264x185x19.9mm but is a weighty 1.25kg. It’s reassuringly sturdy though, and looks just great – you can get it in glossy white, black or blue, with a matt aluminium edging and a black-in-silver keyboard. The keys are weighted nicely and spaced out well and the touchpad is far enough away from the rest of the keys to avoid frustrating accidental swiping. Open the lid with a heavy, smooth movement, and the screen tilts almost 180°. The high-definition, 10.1-inch display comes up with an impressive 1280x720 pixels; compare that to the 1024x600 pixels on offer from the Asus Eee Seashell 1005HA, and you can see just how good it is.

 

Memory and batter power on the Nokia Booklet 3G

 

The memory is no better than you get with other netbooks – a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor and 1GB of RAM. This means delays when you try and load a programme, especially if you’re running applications in the background.

 

The battery life, though, is excellent. We used it for nine hours worth of media playing, Wi-Fi and 3G before we had to recharge. Three USB ports meant we could play media from a hard drive, attach some speakers to listen to it through and charge a phone at the same time. A HDMI port lets you connect a HD TV, and a massive 120GB hard drive means you can store shedloads of files to take with you. And if all that’s not enough, a SD memory card slot gives you the option of even more digital storage space.

 

Internet access on the Nokia Booklet 3G

 

Now here’s a first for a computer – and a touch of Nokia magic: it’s got a SIM slot. Insert any SIM card to connect to 3G-speed internet. If you want to swap your SIM for another, you’ll get a new connection in just 15 seconds.

 

Apart from the obvious aesthetic benefits, the features on the SIM knock the mobile broadband dongle into a cocked hat. And for extra connectivity, Wi-Fi connected to our local network in less than 10 seconds.

 

Social Hub on the Nokia Booklet 3G

 

Nokia’s Social Hub software is designed to bring all your social networking together in one place, combining your Facebook and Twitter feeds and Flickr photo updates. If you want to send a text to a mobile, this is where you go, but it only works when you’ve got a SIM card in, and if you don’t, it doesn’t warn you, which is annoying.

 

The text message interface is basic and has no option for threaded messages, so you just view your sent and received texts in chronological order. Having our SIM card in naturally made us assume that we would be able to access our contacts but no, for that you need to sync your phone to Nokia’s Ovi Suite, which means you need a Nokia phone. There’s not even a way of manually loading your contacts onto the Nokia Booklet 3G. If you really wanted to, you could borrow a Nokia handset and sync your numbers up through that, but it’s a lot of faff for such a simple function. We like that it saves your text no matter which SIM card you were using at the time.

 

Updates from Facebook and Twitter will pop up in the taskbar so you get live feeds, but the apps themselves fall a bit flat. Twitter lets you replay to messages but doesn’t give you a dedicated list of @mentions. For Facebook, you can post updates, comment on and like other people’s, but you don’t get event invitations and can’t accept friend requests. It’s easy enough to download better apps software but doesn’t make it too great in the usability stakes. One good thing, though, is that you can post an update to as many networks as you want at the same time.

 

Processing speed on Nokia Booklet 3G

 

Unfortunately the Nokia Booklet 3G is sloooooow. Running more than one application resulted in the kind of delays that leave shadows on the screen or freeze the device completely when you try and maximise your screen.

Installation was a slow process – it took 25 minutes to load up Ovi and five minutes for the Nokia software updater. The new Internet Explorer, though, is finally catching up with other browsers: it now offers tabbed browsing, ‘private’ browsing and accelerators, which give you text options including looking up words in the dictionary and mapping an address.

 

Gadgets on the Nokia Booklet 3G

 

The Nokia Booklet 3G is loaded with two of Nokia’s own gadgets, desktop widgets that will be familiar to anyone with Windows Vista or Windows 7. The preloaded gadgets consist of a currency converter, a CPU meter and weather. An Ovi Maps gadget shows your current location of a map with a link to the Ovi Maps site, helped along by the welcome addition of A-GPS. Unfortunately you can’t interact with the map to get directions or local information.

 

The verdict on Nokia Booklet 3G

 

We like being able to access broadband internet with a SIM card, and it’s good being able to text from the device. But not being able to load your contacts unless you have a Nokia fun is just daft. The Nokia Booklet 3G is a competent netbook, but costs twice the price of its competitors. For the cash you get that mammoth battery life, the texting features and SIM card internet. If you don’t want those last options, though, you can get cheaper.