Berkeley, USA – There’s no disguising the fact that we’re shameless fans of what the teams over at the Nokia Research Center do, applaud NRC’s open innovation approach, and hurl praise at its many collaborators and radical thinkers. From recent developments such as Nokia Locate Sensor and indoor positioning trials to battery bending and face sketching, this is one of the most exciting divisions within Nokia, so it’s great to see another collaboration and new laboratory pop up recently in Berkley, California in the USA.

The new Nokia Research Center in Berkley is tasked with some fascinating projects coupled with important ambitions that could help alter (for the better) what our devices are capable of achieving in the future. One of the core areas of research is the alchemy of squeezing better performance from mobile products using less power consumption. Read on to find out more about this and the other fields of research that will be explored at Nokia’s latest research facility.

Increasing the performance of a mobile device while lowering power consumption grants the obvious benefit of enabling you to do more with your phone for longer before it starts gasping for more juice. And the team at NRC Berkley will also be investigating how to achieve this goal in both active and idle modes. One of the other main areas of research is accelerating the mobile web browser and runtime environments. The benefit of this research to many folk in emerging markets, and in particular, people using devices in rural areas where recharging a device can mean having to travel to the nearest town to get it plugged in and powered up could be significant, as Dr. John Shen, head of NRC Palo Alto and now also running NRC Berkley, explains:

“The results of these research areas can greatly improve consumers’ mobile device experience particularly in emerging economies where electricity is limited and access to the Internet is primarily or solely via the mobile device. NRC is pleased to provide a laboratory environment that will enable us and UC Berkeley to collaborate in areas that are important to both of us.”

Let us know what you think. Post your thoughts in the comments section below.

Photo from danielle_blue