The S Pen has been a feature of Samsung’s biggest and best flagship smartphones since the original Galaxy Note in 2011, but in 2025, you’d be forgiven for questioning its future.
Yes, the now-iconic smartphone accessory is still part of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, but there was no mention of the S Pen on stage Galaxy Unpacked in January – even Samsung’s official press release for the new phone relegates it to the small print – and the company actually removed Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tech from the latest S Pen model, meaning it’s no longer able to carry out Air action shortcuts and remote control features.
In isolation, these changes might seem inconsequential (Samsung told TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff that it removed the S Pen’s Bluetooth features because so few people were using them). But the accessory is clearly not the high-priority marketing tool it once was for Samsung, which has prompted speculation about its potential discontinuation on social media platforms, Samsung’s own community forum, and indeed here on TechRadar.
So, what does Samsung have to say about the S Pen’s future? At MWC 2025, I put the question to the company’s Mobile Experience (MX) VP of Product and Marketing in the UK, Annika Bizon, and her response should allay the concerns of worried S Pen fans.
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“Multimodal is really important to us,” Bizon explained. “So [that’s] how people use their phone – whether they’re speaking, whether they’re writing, whether they’re in a meeting. People do use their S Pens in meetings to write notes. So, I don’t see a space where the S Pen is not a key part of our portfolio.
“And honestly, when you look at the Ultra, it’s something people genuinely come back to us around. [They ask us] “Will it have an S Pen?” And it goes back to the Note days. […] We see the S Pen as something that is key to the Ultra experience at this point.”
In a recent feature piece speculating on the S Pen’s future, we noted that “major advancements in AI mean that some of the unique functions of the S Pen are no longer quite so unique,” but Bizon is confident that the arrival of Galaxy AI on the best Samsung phones hasn’t harmed the S Pen’s appeal: “Creativity is one of our core values. If you’re creative, you want to be able to draw and sketch things. And with Sketch to Image being one of our AI features, you can sketch beautifully using the S Pen. It’s got quite a big design edge.”
Bizon concluded: “The research says [consumers are using the S Pen], and it’s something that we’re proud of as being part of our portfolio.”
So there you have it. Unless Samsung has a change of heart between now and next year, you can expect the S Pen to be a feature of the as-yet-unconfirmed Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
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axel.metz@futurenet.com (Axel Metz)
