The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra’s S Pen change is getting ever more confusing and disappointing
- Replacement Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra S Pens have a similar price tag to S24 Ultra ones, despite the lack of Bluetooth
- A teardown has also revealed that the S25 Ultra may be capable of charging a Bluetooth S Pen
- Yet Samsung has stated it has no plans to sell a Bluetooth one
There’s a lot to love about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, but one thing a lot of people very much don’t love is the changes to the S Pen, which unlike the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s, lacks Bluetooth – meaning it also lacks various Bluetooth-enabled features.
This was likely a cost-cutting exercise by Samsung, which claimed in defense of the change that not many people made use of the Bluetooth features anyway. But if you need to buy a replacement S Pen, none of those savings will be passed on to you, as the company is charging just as much for its Bluetooth-free S Pen as for the more high-tech Bluetooth model it offered with previous phones.
Specifically – as spotted by 9to5Google – Samsung has added this new S Pen to its store at a price of $50 / £49 / AU$62.30. That’s the same price as the previous model in the US, while in the UK this new S Pen actually costs marginally more than the £47 S Pen for the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
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At full price it’s also slightly more expensive in Australia, but Samsung is selling it at a reduced price there for whatever reason, bringing it below the price of the S24 Ultra’s S Pen. So the current price isn’t too objectionable in Australia, but in the US and the UK buyers might find it hard to stomach.
The parts are in place
And this isn’t the only odd S Pen news, as in a teardown video, JerryRigEverything has found that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra still seemingly has an inductive charger inside the S Pen slot. This would be used to charge the S pen if it had Bluetooth, but with the stylus we actually got there’s seemingly no need for this charger.
So why has Samsung still included the inductive charger? JerryRigEverything posits that rather than being a charger it could just be there to sense whether the S Pen is in its dock or not, but also notes that it looks almost identical to the charging component in previous Ultra phones, so likely is capable of providing power to a stylus.
Another possibility is that Samsung plans to sell a Bluetooth S Pen separately, and in fact a Samsung blog post specifically said that would happen, but bafflingly the company has since stated that no Bluetooth versions will be made available.
So maybe Samsung initially planned to sell a Bluetooth S Pen separately and then changed its mind, but we can’t say for sure. If so though, it’s always possible that the company will change its mind again – especially as there’s a fan petition for a Bluetooth S Pen.