Although the Qi wireless power standard still seems like a niche technology, the Wireless Power Consortium keeps plugging away: it's showing off a bunch of new inductive charging docks for vehicles here at Mobile World Congress. The basic integration works just as expected — drop a phone on the charging surface in the console and watch it juice up — but there's also a neat motorized version that grabs your phone when you set it down and a particularly interesting prototype that adds NFC and a wireless antenna booster for better cell reception. The booster works with any phone by coupling to the handset's antenna wirelessly, but the NFC stuff obviously requires a phone that supports it.

WPC member ConvenientPower is also showing off its prototype high-power inductive charging system — the 5-watt charging backs it announced at CES cut iPhone charging time down to just under two hours, and the company also has a 30-watt system it's using to charge an Android tablet. It's all very early and all the Qi backs still add far too much thickness, but it's clear that Qi and the WPC aren't going to go anywhere we're all dropping phones on everything to charge them.