Wireless charging is supposed to be awesome, futuristic, and dare I say it, revolutionary, but why hasn’t it taken off? Long story short, there are competing standards that are, of course, incompatible with each other, so phone makers don’t know which horse to bet on. There’s Qi, which is backed by the Wireless Power Consortium. And then there’s the Power Matters Alliance, which doesn’t have a consumer facing brand as far as I know.

Samsung is a member of both groups, and as of today, so is Qualcomm. Qualcomm says they’re actually going to try to invent a type of wireless charger that can work with both standards, but boy, you’ve got to wonder, why can’t these companies just sit down at a table and talk for 30 minutes so we can get this annoying battle out of the way?

Also in the news today, AllThingsD reports that Samsung has invested $4 million in a wireless charging company called PowerbyProxi. Their technical achievement is making a charger that doesn’t require a specific contact point. Useful, because no one wants to make sure they put their phone down on a specific coin sized spot on their table, they just want to plop it down and have it work.

What does any of this have to do with Android? I want to say nothing, because Google doesn’t care if Android phones charge wirelessly or not, but the thing is Samsung is the world’s largest Android device maker and Qualcomm is the leader of mobile chips. When those two come to a decision about anything, it’s pretty much going to become the standard.