Samsung has supported wireless charging in several of its handsets over the past few years, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the function is also included with the new Galaxy S6 and S6 Note products. Having the phones work with multiple wireless charging products, however, would be new.
If you take Samsung’s most recent blog post as a big hint, this functionality could arrive on the S6 products when they debut on March 1. On Tuesday, Samsung penned a lengthy piece on the history of wireless charging, making a note that it is on the board of all three major wireless power standards bodies.
Those are the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), the Power Matters Alliance (PMA), and Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) for those keeping score at home. The former two recently signed a letter of intent to merge and work together.
However, each group has had its own competing standards, meaning that a phone with wireless charging capabilities using one approach generally doesn’t work with the others. That’s led to fragmentation: Your phone might support wireless charging but the charging pad in your local Starbucks, for example, may not work with it.
In its post, Samsung specifically pointed that components debuted last year that can work with all major standards so that it won’t matter which wireless charging technology a charging pad uses. Then came the money quote:
Samsung will accelerate to democratize this wireless charging technology with compelling smartphones. With our upcoming Galaxy smartphones, users will be able to enter a new wireless world like never before.
Given the timing of the Galaxy S6 product launch, I find this blog post to be a hint that Samsung’s new phones could provide more universal wireless charging.
Of course, other handset makers have access to the same chips and components that would finally rid us of the wireless charging standards war, so I’d expect handsets and tablets from LG, HTC, Sony, Motorola and others to offer the same at some point this year.
