In a recent post on one of its websites, Samsung talked about the recent history of wireless charging and how the company has been working on bringing this technology to market since late 2000. It finally did it in 2011 when the company brought wireless charging support for its Droid Charge smartphone.

Samsung, along with other companies, joined the Wireless Power Consortium that created the Qi magnetic induction standard back in 2008. The Qi standard has gained some popularity in smartphones over the past few years, but it also had to compete with the PMA magnetic induction standard from Powermat. While the Qi standard caught on with smartphone users, the PMA standard was more successful with companies because of its stronger brand.

Then came the self-proclaimed "next-generation" wireless charging standard called Rezence, which works through magnetic resonance rather than magnetic induction. The Rezence standard promised to enable wireless charging through different materials, at longer distances of up to a few feet, and it could even charge multiple devices at once.

The A4WP (Alliance for Wireless Power) eventually merged with the Power Matters Alliance behind the PMA standard, but the new consortium still has to compete with the Wireless Power Consortium that develops the Qi standard.

Because we're talking about a brand new type of technology, having multiple standards can hurt adoption, so Samsung, which is a member of both consortiums, has decided that it's best to just use both technologies in its upcoming devices. This way, a device such as the Galaxy S6 could be backwards compatible with both standards and all the accessories that support them. Soon, for example, Samsung's devices could be charged wirelessly either at McDonalds restaurants, which use Qi charging, or at Starbucks stores, which use PowerMat chargers.

Samsung believes that using both technologies in mobile devices will dramatically accelerate the adoption of wireless charging in 2015 and beyond.



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