The S Pen Should’ve Stayed Far Away From The Galaxy S Series For Its Own Sake

Hadlee Simons / Android Authority

The announcement of the Galaxy S25 has been a bit doom and gloom for fans of the S Pen, most of whom are refugees from the Note series. Samsung decided to downgrade the beloved pencil to remove Bluetooth functionality, thus ridding it of any remote functionality like being used as a camera shutter and for Air Actions. And even though we had some fake hope for a minute that a standalone Bluetooth S Pen could be up for sale, Samsung quickly denied that rumor (which, to be fair, came from its own Insights blog).

So the S Pen finds its position shifted this year — from the star of the show in the Galaxy S22, S23, and S24 to a mere figurant on the Galaxy S25. It’s not as powerful as it used to be, nor as important. And fans of the S Pen are right to be worried: Is this the beginning of the end of the S Pen? Should Samsung release a special-edition Note phone to appease S Pen fans? I think the concerns are legit, and most importantly, the S Pen should’ve never come close to the Galaxy S series. It was doomed straight away.

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority

See, I’ve always been fascinated by the S Pen and the Note series. The 80s kid in me still wants to grab pens and jot thoughts down, scribble, draw, and write things. It’s one of the reasons I love the Kindle Scribe. I never owned a Galaxy Note, though, because it was too expensive, too large, too overkill. But it was the standard I looked at each time I bought a new phone, or I saw another flagship being announced. The Galaxy Note series was the ultimate benchmark for phone geeks like me, and the S Pen was the cherry on top of that cake.

Galaxy S phones are made to appeal to everyone and offend no one. They’re a perfect example of optimizing features versus price.

In comparison, the Galaxy S series has always been the more mass-market option — a great Android phone conceived from the start to accommodate the maximum number of features that most people want, to appeal to everyone and offend no one. Galaxy S phones are a perfect example of optimizing features versus price: Every option or addition that isn’t used by the masses or is too divisive is eventually axed. It’s wasted money on the bill of materials and/or the R&D invoice. IR blasters? Gone. MST for Samsung Pay? Gone. Notification LED? Heart rate sensor? Gone and gone. (I’m not even mentioning the microSD card reader, headphone jack, or removable battery, which are greedy, industry-wide moves, not Samsung-only changes.)

That’s why the Galaxy S series is so boring nowadays. It’s the safest phone Samsung puts out every year and the least controversial. There was a time when the company got a bit adventurous with its S phones, but the most daredevil move it’s made in the last few years is adopting the S Pen into the Ultra line-up and ditching the Note series.

Zarif Ali / Android Authority

At the time, this move made sense to everyone — even if it angered a lot of Galaxy Note fans. But you couldn’t deny that having a Galaxy S series, Galaxy Note series, and two Galaxy Z foldables was a bit much, even for a company with the extensive resources of Samsung. One had to give way, and it couldn’t be the hot new foldables or the mass-market option. No, the phone that appeals to nerds like me had to go. But to appease these fans, it would merge into the high-end Galaxy S Ultra as a Frankenstein mix of Galaxy S and Galaxy Note.

Merging the S Pen into Galaxy S phones made more sense than killing everything about the Note series.

For a few years, the S Pen survived in this new world. It even became one of the highlight features of the Galaxy S Ultra, but in retrospect, the clock has always been ticking. The Ultra is still a Galaxy S phone, so it’s still made for the masses, not for the refugee Note and S Pen fans. And the masses don’t use the S Pen, unfortunately, or at least not as frequently nor as extensively with all of its features. Samsung has the data to prove it; otherwise, it wouldn’t have axed Bluetooth functionality with the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority

This leaves the S Pen in such a state of limbo. It’s bound to happen at some point: Samsung will look at more data and realize the math doesn’t add up anymore and that the S Pen is an infrequently-used hindrance for its Galaxy S phone. Too much money for hardware development, too many compromises to include it in a modern smartphone, and too little return in terms of extra sales. And poof, the S Pen will disappear to the despair of many, me included. (I ended up getting a Galaxy S24 Ultra and loving the S Pen there!)

In retrospect, a niche feature was never going to survive in a mass-market phone. The S Pen was doomed from the moment it came to the Galaxy S series.

That’s why I think I need to revisit my opinion about merging the Galaxy Note and S Ultra. It was the logical move, but it was the wrong one for Note and S Pen fans. Probably the wrong move for Samsung, too. The S Pen was always bound to fail on the Galaxy S series because it’s not a mass-market feature, and Samsung couldn’t will its adoption into existence no matter how many extra features it added.

For its own sake and its own survival, the S Pen should’ve stayed as far away from the Galaxy S series. It had better chances of making it through the years in a “special edition” limited-run series of phones outside of the Galaxy S. Call them Note phones, call them something else; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that this niche feature couldn’t become linked with Samsung’s most boring and least adventurous phone series. Niche features don’t survive in mass-market phones.