According to a brief conversation (translated source) with an industry insider, it appears that Samsung wants to remove the S Pen from the Galaxy S26 Ultra next year. However, the company is also planning to replace that wasted space with a bigger battery, something that I’m sure many would heartily welcome.
Samsung is debating whether to go ahead with this move or not, apparently. The S Pen has become a pretty well-known feature of the company’s flagship phone, and a complete removal may lead to a lot of backlash.
Samsung defended its decision to remove Bluetooth from the S Pen, saying that very few people actually ever used the functionality. Even then, the negative reception online was very prominent, and removing the pen entirely would likely turn off some customers from Galaxy phones in the future.
Samsung should instead adopt denser battery technologies as soon as it can. Furthermore, I’d argue that the major phone manufacturers need to stop playing the silly thickness game, and stop slimming down their phones each year. Just these two changes can lead to a phone with much longer battery life.
However, Samsung and Apple — the largest smartphone rivals in the U.S. — are headed the other way instead. With the Galaxy S25 Edge and the upcoming iPhone 17 Air, both companies have doubled down on boasting about form over function.
There’s really no smartphone company with a stylus pen that has as much brand recognition as Samsung. The closest we’ve got is the Moto G Stylus…and that’s about it. If Samsung ditches the S Pen completely, we’ll lose another iconic feature for barely any positive gain.
