Updated May 12th

Lenovo is joining the bigger keyboard, thinner, lighter and mobile broadband club with an IdeaPad S10-2 model the company let slip on its web site with a post about the unit’s user guide. A press release was issued Tuesday morning.

Certain versions of the S10-2 appear to have support five types of mobile broadband activated by a SIM card given to the customer by the carrier. Supported are EVDO, GSM, SCDMA, TD-SCDMA and High Speed Packet Access. Certain models will also support Wimax as well.

The keyboard also include a new numeric keypad and what appears to be redesigned arrow keys on the lower right hand side of the keyboard. The unit weighs 2.4 pounds versus 2.8 pounds for earlier models and is under an inch thick. The Lenovo web site said the unit was to be released April 30, but the press release today said the units will start at $349 when they hit the market later this month. However, it is not listed yet with the other S10 IdeaPads.

The unit also comes with Dolby 5.1 surround sound, a facial recognition log-in option and a One Key rescue feature to restore health to corrupted data, according to the press release.  Lenovo also unveiled a new social media web site to help customers tap into cyber places such as Facebook and Twitter.

I would welcome a better keyboard and mobile broadband on my Lenovo (currently model 4231) if I get the courage to commit to 24 months at $60 per. Models with built-in mobile broadband are going to be hard to resist.