Samsung is playing a dangerous game with the Galaxy Z Fold 8's missing S Pen support

It’s been a year since Samsung removed the S Pen from the Galaxy Z Fold series. The Z Fold 7 debuted a welcome redesign that was thinner and lighter than ever before, and the hardware needed to power the stylus is one of the things sacrificed to make that happen.

I’d hoped Samsung would find a way to bring the S Pen back to the Z Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra, but when I spent several hours with the new phones, my disappointment was immeasurable, and my day was ruined.

The Fold 7’s lacking S Pen support was annoying, but in 2026 with the Fold 8 lineup, it’s a worse look than ever before.

The competition has caught up

Samsung got away with removing the S Pen last year because there weren’t any stylus-equipped competitors. Now the Motorola Razr Fold exists, offering a fantastic stylus and hardware that beats the Z Fold 8 Ultra in many ways. Samsung isn’t the default choice for a folding phone in the US anymore, and if it wants to compete, it needs to play to its strengths. The S Pen and all the features Samsung has developed for it over the last 15 years are among those strengths.

Does Motorola’s Smart Pen really compete with the S Pen? In a word, yes. Many of the features I’ve grown to love with the S Pen are here. You can hover the Smart Pen over the screen to display a cursor that previews messages, links, and images. Third-party support is just as good, too. Infinite Painter and other apps that have added S Pen support over the years also work with the Smart Pen.

What helps Motorola is the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), which is an open industry standard for active styluses. It’s the same standard that many Chromebooks use for their pens and styluses, so it’s pretty well supported in Android and Android apps. Drawing, writing, and navigating Android feel just as good with the Smart Pen as they do with the S Pen.

When I said earlier that Samsung isn’t the default foldable choice anymore, I wasn’t being hyperbolic. It already has a big market share of the US foldable market, and that was before Motorola even made any book-style foldables. The Razr Fold isn’t a perfect phone, but it puts up a strong fight against Samsung, and the Smart Pen is a big reason for that, at least for me. All else being equal, I’ll always pick something with a stylus, and Samsung doesn’t fill that need.

Samsung still has some advantages. The Smart Pen needs to be powered to function, unlike the S Pen, which only uses a battery to enable Bluetooth features and can be used without charging. Samsung has some apps that use the S Pen that you can’t get anywhere else. Pentastic lets you customize the S Pen with different cursors, sounds, and more. Then there’s PENUP, which is great for simple doodles and coloring and really makes use of everything the S Pen can do.

Thickness isn’t an excuse anymore

One of the reasons Samsung said it removed the S Pen last year was the need to make its foldables thinner. Obviously, the S Pen has changed a lot since 2011, but the fundamental technology is the same. It uses an extra Wacom digitizer layer in the display that generates an EMF field that the S Pen interacts with. That’s why the S Pen itself doesn’t need to be powered, at the cost of the display being thicker.

As I mentioned earlier, Motorola’s Smart Pen uses USI 2.0 rather than a Wacom digitizer. It works by connecting the stylus to the phone wirelessly so the two devices can communicate. The Smart Pen interacts with the screen’s normal touch digitizer to detect your finger. The inclusion of the Smart Pen doesn’t make phones like the Razr Fold any thicker than they would be without it. It also works on both of the Razr Fold’s screens, not just one. The digitizer in the Razr Fold isn’t identical to a normal phone — it has to be designed to accept input from the Smart Pen — but it isn’t any thicker than the regular touch layer.

Samsung can’t use thickness as an excuse for removing the S Pen when this technology exists and has existed for a long time.

Samsung is getting left behind

There have been rumors for years now that Samsung would switch the S Pen over to something akin to the USI 2.0 standard. It would do more than eliminate the issues with making the display thicker. It would also prevent Qi2 magnets from creating S Pen dead spots whenever you had a magnetic case or accessory attached, and would hopefully mean Samsung would build the magnets into the phone.

Not long ago, I said the S Pen needed to evolve or die, and using Motorola’s Smart Pen and then holding the Z Fold 8, which is begging to be used like a Moleskine notebook, has only reaffirmed that view. I have loved the S Pen on every device I’ve used it with, from my original Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet that got me through three years of automotive engineering at college to the S26 Ultra and my Z Fold 4.

It feels like the S Pen is a part of Samsung’s identity that the company would rather forget, and that’s a shame. In a world where competitors are embracing foldable styluses while Samsung does the opposite, Samsung is running out of excuses for why it’s letting itself get left behind.