Samsung Kills S Pen Support for the New Galaxy Z Fold 7
Forget reaching for the S Pen when using the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 — the two won’t be working together, ever.
What Samsung giveth, Samsung taketh away. The question is what prompted such a drastic move. Samsung never mentions the pen in any of its keynotes or marketing materials associated with the Fold 7’s launch, confirming the omission with PetaPixel with this statement:
“While the S Pen remains a valuable part of the Galaxy line up, our priority with this latest iteration of these products was delivering the lightest and thinnest Galaxy Z series experience yet, as the most important user experience for this generation was to maximize portability.”
This would allude to the fact that the Fold 7 sheds a fair bit of girth to achieve an impressive 8.9-millimeter thickness when folded (save for the big camera module sticking out). What’s not clear is why doing so negates even a modicum of functionality with the pen. It’s odd that despite a larger 8-inch AMOLED screen this time, there’s no way to write on it with an accessory Samsung’s been promoting going back to the first Galaxy Note in 2012.
While Samsung never bundled the pen with any Fold model in the past, it has always emphasized compatibility, starting with the Fold 3. The S Pen Fold Edition was a more passive option, letting you do the basics, while the larger S Pen Pro had all the Bluetooth capabilities. The Slim S Pen Case for the Fold 5 and 6, which I tested myself, was a hybrid of sorts — small, slim, and with the ability to use it as a remote shutter for photos and video.
Samsung’s been down this road before. In 2015, with the Galaxy S6 series, Samsung removed both water resistance and a microSD slot due to a focus on curved displays and slimmer bodies. The ensuing backlash forced its hand, prompting the company to reinstate both features for the S7 series, with curved screens and slim bodies intact.
It wasn’t that long ago that Samsung presented the Z Fold line as a “Note-like productivity powerhouse”, even going as far as deeming it a worthy tool for photo editing and AI-driven features, like Circle to Search and Generative Edit. To buttress the point further, the S Pen only ever worked on the larger screen (and not the smaller Cover Screen) for precisely that reason. A larger canvas to create, anywhere and everywhere. After all, phones go where we go.
It’s worth noting that the Fold 7’s Main Screen uses the same materials as previous models, leaving no technical reason to render pen-to-screen input moot.
Instead of high-end cameras, which the Fold line never had, the idea was for users to create content via their own artistry — so it courted illustrators, painters, and sketch artists to work their magic. Photo editing was an ancillary piece, while the Galaxy AI push only augmented that further, providing another base to work with.
All that said, this is a confounding move. The Fold 7 is already expensive, starting at $1,899. It may not be popular to ask for another $50-$100 to sell a pen, but it was always an optional choice anyway. Taking it away feels punitive and murky.
Earlier this year, Samsung removed the Bluetooth features for the S Pen in the Galaxy S25 Ultra, stating that only 1% of users with previous Ultra models actually used said features. Thus, no more remote shutter with the camera, among other things. What are the chances those features come back in 2026?
Is it a similar case here? Fold devices hardly sell anywhere near the volume of Samsung’s more mainstream handsets (like the S25 Ultra), so a small percentage of a smaller pool of consumers buying the pen as a separate accessory may be a factor. Were S Pen sales for Fold models bad or declining? Samsung won’t say, but if pen input returns in a very thin Fold 8, we’ll know how much portability and sales truly mattered.
Image credits: Photos by Ted Kritsonis
