The Galaxy Z Fold 7 made sacrifices to be this slick. Honor and Oppo show it was not necessary

Samsung’s flagships are defined by a few things. Solid build using high-quality materials and industrial design, powerful hardware, top-tier cameras, top-tier displays, a very stylized custom user interface over Android, and the S Pen.

Ah, the contentious S Pen. Some swear by it, other wish it to be gone and to free some room for extra battery. And the latter group kind of got their wish with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 — kind of but not exactly, since the Fold line never had a slot for the S Pen, but they were thicker because of it for other reasons.

Thus far, Galaxy Z Fold phones have been on the chunky side. And that was a complaint that kept growing, especially as competing manufacturers started launching foldable phones that were thinner and thinner, with nice big cover screens that made them feel like “normal” phones.

So, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 made a major change. It’s now incredibly thin, maybe the thinnest on the market, and is a huge departure from what the Z Fold line used to be. It also had to drop support for the S Pen — something you could use if you bought one separately.

What’s special about the S Pen?

Whatever you think about the Samsung stylus, you can’t deny the fact that it’s a signature feature. It was first released with the original Galaxy Note way back in 2011. And it has been steadily perfected over the years.

Samsung’s S Pens have excellent accuracy and palm rejection. However, they are entirely passive, meaning they don’t require battery or Bluetooth connection to operate.

Yes, it is technically true that the S Pen has had a Bluetooth pairing to its phone since the Galaxy Note 9 launched. However, this was all done to add remote control features to the stylus — when you take it away from the phone, you can still use it as a remote camera shutter, a presentation slide switcher, media playback button, and some other uses.

Even with its battery down to 0%, it would still work as the same accurate and always dependable writing tool. With 4096 levels of pressure, angle, and palm rejection.

How is this possible?

Samsung has had a steady partnership with Wacom — a company that specializes in making digital pens and drawing tablets, specifically designed for artists or for businesses and agencies that require your signature to be digitized. The reason Wacom is a market leader is that their pens feel a lot like the real thing, and because they are fool-proof. No battery, no pairing — apply pen to canvas and it does its thing.

So, Samsung phones that support the S Pen utilize two digitizers (the digitizer is the layer underneath the screen glass, which recognizes your touch input) — one for fingers and one for the S Pen. This is why the palm rejection works passively — when the stylus digitizer reads input, the phone intelligently disables the touch digitizer.

Why did the Galaxy Z Fold 7 drop S Pen support?

In order to get the Z Fold 7 to be as thin and light as the market demands, Samsung had to drop the extra Wacom layer, simple as that. And I am quite sure that this is viewed as a compromise even by the company. It took some wild engineering to get it to work on the foldables in the first place. And, Samsung Mobile Experience Executive Director Kang Min-seok did say that a future Fold may bring it back.

It was hardly a surprise — rumors were already warning us about this before the Z Fold 7 launch. But they were also saying that Samsung is working on an alternative. Such an alternative did not arrive. Maybe it’s not possible?

Well, it kind of is because…

Oppo and Honor foldables support their own Pens

Oppo and Honor make their own super-thin and powerful foldable phones. Direct rivals of the Galaxy Z Fold series and probably a catalyst for the design change, as they have been chasing that thinness dragon for a while now.

But you know what? Oppo has the Oppo Pen, which works with the Find N2, N3, and N5, and the OnePlus Open and Open 2. Honor has the Magic-Pen, which works with the Honor Magic V2, V3, and V5, even though it is also so impossibly thin.

What, how, who?

Well, the reality is that these are active styli. Meaning, they require a charged battery and a Bluetooth connection to operate. However, in return, they give you the 4096-level pressure sensitivity, angle detection, and palm rejection.

So, they aren’t as seamless to work or easy to operate as just applying S Pen to screen and getting a result. But at least it’s something.

As previously mentioned, rumors stated that Samsung was looking at alternative solutions for making an S Pen work on the new, thin Z Fold. And it’s very possible that it was specifically thinking about an active stylus solution, like Honor and Oppo have.

So, all is not lost. But here are the questions that remain:

1. Will Samsung go through with it
2. When will such a solution come out?
3. When it comes out, will it be backwards-compatible with the Galaxy Z Fold 7? It should, as it’d need a software update — no hardware digitizer needed. But then again… who knows?

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