The Galaxy S25 Ultra retails for $1,300. Penny-pinching over the S Pen just looks bad

The Galaxy S25 Ultra looks to be an amazing phone. Without having touched one, I think the pros far outweigh the cons; if you need a new phone and are ready to pay flagship pricing, the S25 Ultra is definitely worth looking at.

It's not without its fair share of controversy, of course. You have the whole Qi2 without any magnets issue that plenty of people don't like because they want or need to magnetically stick things to the back of their phone.

I expected this when the WPC had to rework the Qi2 spec to include "Qi2 Ready" devices that lose the magnetic requirement, and have no real opinion on it. Buy the case with magnets if you really need it and the issue is solved.

What can't be fixed, though, is the dumbing down of the S Pen. Samsung removed the Bluetooth functionality of the S Pen with the S25 Ultra, claiming that fewer than 0.5% of users were taking advantage of the feature. And it's never coming to the S25 Ultra because crucial hardware isn't in place and the software to control it has been removed from the device.

Surprisingly, most of that hardware is still in place inside the Pen itself. The circuit board and wiring exist, but the board itself doesn't have the tiny components in place. Without knowing exactly what the part numbers of those components were, I can still estimate that they cost about $2.00. In other words, Samsung is probably saving two bucks per phone by removing the S Pen's advanced features.

This is dumb. You should never nickel and dime your way to a higher profit margin on your most upscale and premium product. If you want to sell a device that costs $1,300, you need to find another way to increase your margins.

This isn't something most people will care about. The removal of things like the headphone jack or SD card affected everyone, so outrage was expected, but Samsung is right when it says that almost nobody used the Bluetooth functions of the S Pen, so almost nobody is affected by this.

That doesn't matter because of who is affected: Samsung's "elite" fanbase. These are users who buy the Galaxy S Ultra every year because of things like an advanced active stylus that's deeply integrated into the operating system. Even if they'll never use them, features like this are the reasons why the Galaxy S Ultra is the best phone money can buy in their eyes.

Yes, the savings are massive — $2 per phone and 25 million phones sold is $50 million — but is the black eye worth it? This path only leads to losing some of your elite users while you save some money.

I have no skin in this game. I'm not interested in buying a Galaxy S25 Ultra (though I would recommend it to a few people I know), and even if I were, I'm not worried about a smarter S Pen. But I do know what looks good and what looks bad from a customer's point of view because I am a customer first and a tech writer second.

I wouldn't be surprised to see both magnetic Qi2 charging and the return of Bluetooth for the S Pen on the S26 Ultra, but I also wouldn't be surprised not to see them. It all depends on which choice Samsung thinks is best for its bottom line.