GoKawiilRyan Haines / Android Authority
How the hell is Samsung’s S Pen stylus still a thing in 2026? Smartphone manufacturers have shown themselves over the years to be incredibly eager to get rid of any component that even remotely complicates handset design — not even the eminently useful headphone jack could hold on — and yet Samsung’s comparatively gigantic stylus has somehow persisted.
Today, new rumors suggest that Samsung could finally be planning to expand its flagship lineup next year with an S27 “Pro” model, one that would largely be the same as the Galaxy S27 Ultra, but drop the Ultra’s S Pen support. If Samsung really does deliver this option, it might as well declare the S Pen dead for good.
What do you think of Samsung's rumored plans for the Galaxy S27 Pro? 98 votes I'm love the idea of a Galaxy S27 Pro. It could be a great phone. 32 % I hate this idea. I think Samsung should just focus on making improvements. 36 % I'm worried it might drive up the price of the Galaxy S27 Ultra. 18 % I need more information to make up my mind. 14 %
For as great as the S Pen can be, it’s also totally unnecessary I was an early fan of the S Pen with the original Galaxy Note back in the long, long ago, and stuck with it up through the Galaxy Note 20. Early on, I really liked it; I was a slow convert to the everything-touchscreen world that smartphones were pushing, and a stylus was a nice pair of training wheels, helping me feel like I was retaining some precision in much the same way I might look for an early phone with a hardware QWERTY keyboard.
Even as touchscreen input got a lot better, I still found myself enjoying the S Pen’s versatility, especially as Samsung outfitted it with more and more features in future generations. Air gestures were fun, but as I look back on them now, it all feels a bit gimmicky. Sure, there’s some magic to gesturing around with an electronic toothpick, but at the end of the day, I really wasn’t getting anything done faster, or doing things I couldn’t accomplish easily enough through plain-old touch input.
There's some magic to gesturing around with an electronic toothpick.
Despite all that, I was still an S Pen fan. For Samsung’s phones, at least, the S Pen was just one component in a larger conversation: Do I want a Galaxy S, or do I want a Galaxy Note? And later: Do I want an Ultra model? You could argue that the presence of the S Pen may have been a driving force behind the creation of these alternatives, but they also offered a lot of upgrades beyond just this native stylus support. And that made these decisions a lot easier when you were saying “yes” to this whole bundle of top-shelf phone features, all at once.
The worst thing Samsung can do for the S Pen is singling it out
Adamya Sharma / Android Authority
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