The S Pen has been a characteristic of each Samsung Galaxy Ultra mannequin because the Galaxy S22 Ultra, and that development continues with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, this looks like the ultimate time we’ll see the S Pen in a Samsung telephone.
At Samsung’s newest Galaxy Unpacked launch occasion, Galaxy AI was entrance and heart, but the S Pen wasn’t even a aspect be aware. It wasn’t talked about. Like, in any respect.
Give Samsung’s official press launch a learn – which, admittedly, covers three new S25 gadgets – and also you’ll discover that the S Pen will get one solitary point out within the small print clarifying the S25 Ultra’s IP68 water resistance credentials.
It’s a sorry state of affairs for a stylus that Samsung claimed, just a few years in the past, was “rewriting the foundations for cellular.”
An essential level of differentiation… as soon as
The S Pen was as soon as an essential level of differentiation for Samsung, not solely towards its opponents however inside its personal vary of telephones; the accent drew a transparent line within the sand between the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note sequence.
Introduced with the primary Samsung Galaxy Note handset in 2011, the S Pen (or Pen S, as a former colleague of mine as soon as termed it) arrived contained in the telephone itself. It was a slender stylus you could possibly slide out of the telephone’s physique and use on the then-massive 5.3-inch show.
Over the years, Samsung refined and improved the S Pen, growing the degrees of strain sensitivity, fine-tuning the design, and including extra performance. For creatives and productiveness lovers, the S Pen was a must have accent for working and sketching on the go.
With the dying of the Galaxy Note sequence after the Galaxy Note 10 in 2019, there was a fallow 12 months earlier than Samsung delighted S Pen followers by transferring it to the premium ‘Ultra’ model of its trio of flagship Galaxy S gadgets. Yet quick ahead to 2025, and the S Pen is little greater than an afterthought.
Samsung’s focus is now elsewhere
Instead, Samsung’s push into AI and additional growth of cellular digital camera know-how received more often than not within the highlight, clearly displaying what the corporate now deems most essential within the smartphone trade. The S Pen, by implication, is not essential.
Another main signal that this could possibly be the ultimate iteration of the S Pen is the truth that Samsung has truly eliminated options from the stylus contained in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Yes, the S Pen is now worse than earlier than. The accent’s Bluetooth connectivity is gone, and with it the vary of Air Actions shortcuts and distant options (similar to with the ability to use the S Pen as a digital camera shutter button).
Even if this isn’t the final dance for the S Pen, the writing is undoubtedly on the wall for the as soon as mighty smartphone stylus.
And why has Samsung made such a transfer? Because only a few individuals had been truly utilizing the options, the corporate admits – and maybe that’s not shocking. Major developments in AI imply that among the distinctive features the S Pen as soon as supplied are not fairly so distinctive.
The S Pen was as soon as lauded for letting you’re taking handwritten notes, which might then be transformed into textual content. With enhancements in voice recognition, you not want to write down notes in your telephone – you’ll be able to merely converse them into existence, or report the individual talking. You can then use AI to tug out the important thing factors. All with out lifting a finger, not to mention a stylus.
Another plus level of the S Pen was the flexibility for artists to create artworks immediately on their telephones. The S Pen continues to be superior to utilizing your finger on this regard, nevertheless, for the much less artistically gifted amongst us, Samsung’s Sketch to Image characteristic turns even roughly drawn sketches along with your finger into scarily convincing pictures.
Sketch to Image on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is undefeated. #Unpacked2025 pic.twitter.com/4Xb0okBW1sJanuary 23, 2025
Even if this isn’t the final dance for the S Pen, the writing is undoubtedly on the wall for the as soon as mighty smartphone stylus. Like detachable batteries, headphone jacks, and pop-up selfie cameras, the S Pen is ready to turn into a cellular characteristic of the previous.
