The Samsung Galaxy S25 series is going to arrive in less than two weeks, which unsurprisingly, means that we’ve entered the peak leak period. At this point, we’re going to start hearing things about the upcoming phones that we hadn’t even heard a whisper about—in fact, that’s just happened.
Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra is arguably the most notable phone in its family, and not just because it has the best specs of the bunch, but because of the built-in stylus it comes with—a feature that is a rarity among smartphones in general. Unfortunately, that stylus could potentially lose a major feature.
Samsung Could Drop Bluetooth Functionality from the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s S Pen
If you’ve never handled one of Samsung’s S Ultra smartphones, then you might not know about everything that the S Pen in one of those phones can do. Take, for example, the S22 Ultra that I have. The most obvious role of a stylus on your phone is being able to write, and of course, it fulfills that. But one of the coolest things that the S Pen can do is enabled by the Bluetooth functionality that it has.
If you’re in the camera app, you can use the button on the S Pen as a remote shutter, which can make taking photos with a tripod a whole lot easier. However, Bluetooth connectivity also brings Air Actions, which allow you to swipe your S Pen through the air to navigate certain apps and menus. For instance, in the camera app, you can use it to flip to your selfie camera or to switch from video to photo mode.
With the S25 Ultra, all of that might be gone, according to Ishan Agarwal on X. It is rumored that Samsung is planning to drop Bluetooth functionality on the S Pen, and if that ends up happening, all of those special features simply won’t be present for the upcoming device. That sounds like a pretty bad choice and I’m struggling to figure out why that might even be a consideration.
Removing Bluetooth Functionality Could Allow a Slimmer Pen, But Is It Worth the Trade?
The only reason I could think of Samsung choosing to remove Bluetooth functionality from the S Pen (if the news turns out to be true), would be because it somehow allows for a slimmer design. With the mild design shift for the Galaxy S25 Ultra, it could somehow mean less space for the usual size of the stylus—though leaked renders don’t seem to show a noticeable redesign of the S Pen.
I look down on the choice, but I won’t lose sleep over it because I’ve had bad luck with S Pens. My Note 10+’s stylus just stopped connecting to the phone, which meant I couldn’t use Air Actions, and the same thing happened to my S22 Ultra after roughly the same amount of time. Maybe the OEM’s decision is being influenced by quality concerns.
Either way, the S25 Ultra is already expected to bring so little new to the table that a downgrade of this kind is certain not to go down well, especially when it is weakening a feature that so few modern phones have.
