Remarkably, Samsung got its Galaxy S25 Ultra as thin and light as it is, but it came at the cost of a few other capabilities. For instance, the venerable S Pen, a longstanding fixture in the Galaxy Ultra lineup, no longer has a Bluetooth chip to facilitate certain features. In a briefing for its latest flagship release, Samsung told us and other press that no one was using that stuff in the first place, so it decided to scrub them entirely from the lineup.
Specifically, the S Pen can no longer perform Air Actions, a feature launched with the Galaxy Note 10 five years ago. The basic premise of Air Actions is that you control the screen with the stylus from a distance, either using it as a remote or as a wand. There were gestures you could “draw” in the air to control the interface from afar. The S Pen could also be used to sift through your gallery and move back and forward a page in the Samsung browser. It was even usable as a slideshow remote.
If you have a WearOS smartwatch, Samsung or otherwise, you can use a camera shutter shortcut instead. Samsung still lets you use the open-palm hand gesture to start a countdown for a selfie, too—it’s such a popular gesture that even Google adopted it for the Pixel.
In the grand scheme of things, what the S Pen used to offer is minimal compared to everything else the $1,300 Galaxy S25 Ultra purports to do now, which includes a slew of new AI abilities and higher resolution wide-angle photography. Dropping the Bluetooth chip helped the Galaxy S25 Ultra shave enough grams so that Samsung could laud its efforts in chassis thinness. Samsung also kept the handy tracking mechanism that lets you know if you’ve left the S Pen behind—Because if you’re going to use a phone with dedicated storage for a stylus, you should have an alarm mechanism that reminds you what you’re leaving behind.
The S Pen on the Galaxy S25 Ultra still does everything you want a stylus to do: it draws, takes notes, and lets you point and tap on stuff. You can customize the Air Command menu to feature only the abilities you care for most. Screen off memo captures fleeting thoughts in a snap just by popping out the pen. There’s even an option to add a second S Pen for double the stylus entry.
