I Wouldn’t Be Surprised If the Galaxy S25 Ultra Marks the End of the S Pen Era.
My Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review was very positive overall, and it’s certainly one of the best phones of the year, but there’s more than a few things I love about it. The S Pen in particular feels a bit redundant — and I haven’t taken it out of its slot since I finished writing the review.
The sleek stylus has been around since 2011, when it debuted alongside the Samsung Galaxy Note — back when the phablet form factor was still a form factor. After the Note series was discontinued with the Note 20 in 2020, the S Pen was supported by the Galaxy S21 Ultra in 2021, and got its own slot on the Galaxy S22 Ultra the following year.
The S Pen has also been supported by a number of Samsung tablets, laptops, and foldable devices over the years. However, the accessory now appears to be losing popularity: it’s missing from the latest Galaxy Z Fold 7 , and Samsung has cut some of its features in the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Having used the Galaxy S25 Ultra, I’m not surprised that Samsung is cutting back on the S Pen’s functionality, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not included in next year’s Galaxy S26 Ultra.
What do people use it for?
Previous S Pen models with full Bluetooth functionality could be used as a remote control for taking photos or advancing slides in a presentation. Samsung has ditched some of the features in the latest stylus because apparently less than one percent of phone owners actually used them.
The ability to open apps and do other things via Bluetooth is also gone, meaning Samsung’s official list of S Pen capabilities mostly consists of features you can no longer access. What’s more, you won’t be able to use an older S Pen, like the one included with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, on the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
There are some benefits: the S Pen itself and the Galaxy S25 Ultra are lighter, and the latest S Pen no longer requires a battery, so you don’t have to worry about charging it. It’s probably cheaper for Samsung to make the S Pen now, although there was no difference between the launch price of the S24 Ultra and the S25 Ultra.
All that’s left is drawing and taking notes, and learning the basics of selecting buttons, menus, images, and text with the S Pen—I suspect many will use just their fingers. Your approach may be different, but I don’t find myself inserting or removing the S Pen from the Galaxy S25 Ultra very often.
Sure, being able to take handwritten notes on your lock screen is pretty handy, but it’s certainly easier and more convenient to just tap them. That’s what I do, though many of the best note-taking apps (including the excellent Google Keep ) can accept and recognize handwritten text, converting it into digital text.
At least it’s good for digital art.
My favorite time using the S Pen on my Galaxy S25 Ultra was when I was drawing little sketches. The Drawing Assist feature, where you can sketch something and the built-in AI will turn it into a more finished drawing, was fun for about five minutes, though the results rarely matched my expectations.
But I love drawing, and the S Pen makes it much more enjoyable and precise than using your finger. Fire up a note-taking or drawing app on Android, and the S Pen really comes into its own, whether you want to create a flowchart of ideas, a design mockup, or just a little comic strip.
There are more quality drawing apps on Android than you might think. For example, there’s Infinite Painter , Sketchbook , and Krita , and Adobe recently relaunched Photoshop for Android. All of these apps are capable of creating professional-quality drawings, and using them with the S Pen really takes the process to the next level.
However, you probably won’t be doing this kind of thing on a mobile phone very often, and professional creatives will probably want a larger canvas. In that sense, it’s a shame that Samsung dropped support for the S Pen on foldable devices this year. However, I’m sure most foldable owners would prefer a thinner device and longer battery life.
There are certainly people who make full use of the S Pen on their Samsung Galaxy phones, but I think their share of the total number of users is rapidly declining. If removing the S Pen from the Galaxy S26 Ultra means better design and more battery life, I think Samsung will go for it.