Galaxy S26 Leaks Hint at No S Pen Slot — Is This the End of Samsung’s Stylus Era?

Samsung’s S Pen stylus has been pivotal to its strategy of phasing out the Note series in favour of high-end Ultra models. The Galaxy S Ultra models so far have used the silo design to accommodate the S Pen, but their successor next year may do away with it. According to a new report, Samsung may ditch the S Pen digitiser on the Galaxy S26 — a move that would allow room for other components, such as Qi2 wireless charging pads, in the phone.

A tipster who goes by @PandaFlashPro on X (formerly Twitter) has said Samsung has plans to use a different S Pen technology that would eliminate the use of a digitiser, an underlying hardware layer embedded in Ultra phones. Samsung typically uses Wacom EMR (Electro-Magnetic Resonance) technology in its digitisers, allowing the phone to track the S Pen's position with high precision, detect pressure sensitivity, sense hover actions, and enable button functions. The S Pen on the Galaxy S25 Ultra already removes a few of these features, so Samsung's plan to entirely remove the technology that facilitates these tools would not be a stretch.

Theoretically, killing the digitiser would spare more room for other modules in the phone's body, and the prime component that Samsung will likely go for is magnetic charging backs, similar to Apple's MagSafe. Samsung's ultra-premium phones have offered wireless charging for generations, but they have lacked a magnetic charging solution as efficient as MagSafe. Next year could be an opportunity for Samsung to finally adopt this technology and make its Ultra phones more competitive. The tipster hinted that if Qi2 magnetic wireless charging comes to the next Ultra phone, Samsung may as well implement it on other models.

A previous report suggested Samsung might remove the S Pen silo starting with the Galaxy S27 Ultra, so while the arrival of magnetic wireless charging is uncertain, the S Pen's days look numbered.

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