The S Pen has been a feature of every Samsung Galaxy Ultra model since the Galaxy S22 Ultra, and that trend continues with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, this feels like the final time we’ll see the S Pen in a Samsung phone.
At Samsung’s latest Galaxy Unpacked launch event, Galaxy AI was front and center, yet the S Pen wasn’t even a side note. It wasn’t mentioned. Like, at all.
Give Samsung’s official press release a read – which, admittedly, covers three new S25 devices – and you’ll notice that the S Pen gets one solitary mention in 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, only a few years ago, was “rewriting the rules for mobile.”
An important point of differentiation… once
The S Pen was once an important point of differentiation for Samsung, not only against its competitors but within its own range of phones; the accessory drew a clear line in the sand between the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series.
Introduced with the first Samsung Galaxy Note handset in 2011, the S Pen (or Pen S, as a former colleague of mine once termed it) arrived inside the phone itself. It was a slender stylus you could slide out of the phone’s body and use on the then-massive 5.3-inch display.
Over the years, Samsung refined and improved the S Pen, increasing the levels of pressure sensitivity, fine-tuning the design, and adding more functionality. For creatives and productivity lovers, the S Pen was a must-have accessory for working and sketching on the go.
With the death of the Galaxy Note series after the Galaxy Note 10 in 2019, there was a fallow year before Samsung delighted S Pen fans by moving it to the premium ‘Ultra’ version of its trio of flagship Galaxy S devices. Yet fast forward to 2025, and the S Pen is little more than an afterthought.
Samsung’s focus is now elsewhere
Instead, Samsung’s push into AI and further development of mobile camera technology got most of the time in the spotlight, clearly showing what the company now deems most important in the smartphone industry. The S Pen, by implication, is no longer important.
Another major sign that this could be the final iteration of the S Pen is the fact that Samsung has actually removed features from the stylus inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Yes, the S Pen is now worse than before. The accessory’s Bluetooth connectivity is gone, and with it the range of Air Actions shortcuts and remote features (such as being able to use the S Pen as a camera shutter button).
Even if this isn’t the last dance for the S Pen, the writing is undoubtedly on the wall for the once mighty smartphone stylus.
And why has Samsung made such a move? Because very few people were actually using the features, the company admits – and perhaps that’s not surprising. Major advancements in AI mean that some of the unique functions the S Pen once offered are no longer quite so unique.
The S Pen was once lauded for letting you take handwritten notes, which could then be converted into text. With improvements in voice recognition, you no longer need to write notes on your phone – you can simply speak them into existence, or record the person speaking. You can then use AI to pull out the key points. All without lifting a finger, let alone a stylus.
Another plus point of the S Pen was the ability for artists to create works of art directly on their phones. The S Pen is still superior to using your finger in this regard, however, for the less artistically gifted among us, Samsung’s Sketch to Image feature turns even roughly drawn sketches with your finger into scarily convincing images.
Sketch to Image on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is undefeated. #Unpacked2025 pic.twitter.com/4Xb0okBW1sJanuary 23, 2025
Even if this isn’t the last dance for the S Pen, the writing is undoubtedly on the wall for the once mighty smartphone stylus. Like removable batteries, headphone jacks, and pop-up selfie cameras, the S Pen is set to become a mobile feature of the past.
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johnmccannfreelance@gmail.com (John McCann)
