The S Pen was first introduced in 2011 with the original Galaxy Note – this original design was a passive device that relied on a Wacom layer in the Note device itself to track its position and, later on, things like pressure too.
Then in 2018 the Galaxy Note9 added a battery and Bluetooth connectivity to the S Pen, allowing it to trigger actions remotely. In the camera, for example, a single press would take a photo, a double press would switch between cameras. You could also advance photos in the Gallery app, go to the next slide in PowerPoint, control music players and so on, all with this tiny remote that came with the phone.
Pretty cool, huh? Well, apparently not – Samsung says that most people just weren’t using the remote functions. And so the remote control functionality of the Galaxy S25 Ultra S Pen was removed, knocking it back in time to pre-2018 features.
There will be no separate version of the S Pen that can restore the remote functionality on the S25 Ultra either, so this is it. Of course, these days you can achieve the same functions through other means: a Galaxy Watch, a Galaxy Ring or even just palm gestures for the camera.
Presumably, Samsung studied statistics pretty closely before deciding to axe long-standing functionality from the one unique feature on the Galaxy S Ultra. But let’s have a vote on it anyway – are you using the S Pen’s remote control functionality? Are you using the S Pen at all?