S Pen () is a wireless

digital pen A digital pen is an input device which captures the handwriting or brush strokes of a user and converts handwritten analog information into digital data, enabling the data to be utilized in various applications. This type of pen is used in conjunc ...

stylus A stylus is a writing utensil or tool for scribing or marking into softer materials. Different styluses were used to write in cuneiform by pressing into wet clay, and to scribe or carve into a wax tablet. Very hard styluses are also used to En ...

designed and developed by

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC; stylized as SΛMSUNG; ) is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is curr ...

featuring

Wacom is a Japanese company headquartered in Kazo, Saitama, Japan, that specializes in manufacturing graphics tablets and related products. As of 2012 Wacom generated sales of approximately 40.7 billion yen with 785 employees. The company's shares ...

's digital pen technology. It is made for use (and often bundled) with supported

Galaxy A galaxy is a Physical system, system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar medium, interstellar gas, cosmic dust, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek ' (), literally 'milky', ...

mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, as well as selected

Samsung Notebook Samsung Notebook, (stylized as SΛMSUNG Notebook), formerly known as Samsung Sens (삼성 센스), also marketed as Samsung Notebook Series (2011–2013), is a line of portable computers produced by Samsung Electronics. The Sens line was first l ...

Galaxy Book Samsung Galaxy Book is a line of Microsoft Windows based Laptop, laptop computers produced by Samsung Electronics of South Korea. The Galaxy Book originated as a tablet computer with a 2-in-1 laptop, detachable keyboard; however in 2020 it had ev ...

, and

Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

notebooks. It was first released with the Galaxy Note in 2011, becoming a core feature of the Note line of products. The S Pen supports features such as translating text by hovering the pen, and creating animated messages.

History and models

The S Pen was introduced with the Galaxy Note series, the first "

phablet A phablet (, ) is a mobile device combining or straddling the size formats of smartphones and tablets. The word is a blend word of ''phone'' and ''tablet''. The term was largely unused by the late 2010s, since average phone sizes eventually morph ...

", in 2011. The stylus has an active digitizer by

, with the first generation having 128 levels of pressure sensitivity. A button on the side of the pen can be used to activate special pen-oriented features and gestures in the system software. The second generation S Pen on the Galaxy Note II is slightly thicker than in the original Galaxy Note, and a feature marketed as ''

Air View The Samsung Galaxy S4 is an Android smartphone produced by Samsung Electronics as the fourth smartphone of the Samsung Galaxy S series and was first shown publicly on March 14, 2013, at Samsung Mobile Unpacked in New York City. It is the succes ...

'' allows a user to preview content by hovering the pen over the content, similar to the

hoverbox A hoverbox (also called a hover box, hovercard or hover card) is a popup window that is neither a tooltip nor a traditional popup, but is a popup that appears when the mouse is placed over an icon on the screen for a short period of time, witho ...

feature of a mouse in some desktop computers, such as thumbnails in the gallery and a preview tooltip on the video player's time seek bar, and zooming in the web browser (''

Samsung Internet Samsung Internet is a Chromium-based web browser for Android smartphones developed by Samsung Electronics. It was first released in 2012 as a basic mobile browser for Samsung Galaxy devices. Samsung estimated that it had around 400 million mo ...

'')Video
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 – Air View
by FoneArena (October 10th, 2012)Video
Samsung Galaxy Note 2 – Air View
(November 19th, 2012) and for scrolling. On the Galaxy Note 7, the OS featured several new tools supporting the S Pen stylus, including translation, a

screen magnifier A screen magnifier is software that interfaces with a computer's graphical output to present enlarged screen content. By enlarging part (or all) of a screen, people with visual impairments can better see words and images. This type of assistive te ...

, and a

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

recording tool. The previous suite of note-taking apps was also consolidated into a single Samsung Notes app. The S Pen on the

Galaxy Note 8 The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is an Android phablet smartphone developed, produced and marketed by Samsung Electronics. The successor to the discontinued Samsung Galaxy Note 7, Samsung Galaxy Note Fan Edition, Samsung Galaxy Note 5, and Galaxy Note ...

offers expanded software features, including "Live Message" for the creation of handwritten notes combined with emojis resulting in short animated

s. Users can remove the S Pen from the device and immediately write notes on the display through "Screen Off Memo," which works due to the screen's always-on capabilities. Starting from the Galaxy Note 9 and ending with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the S Pen has

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

capabilities, including the ability to tap the button on the pen to do certain tasks. S Pen

On the Galaxy Note 10, the pen is one piece of plastic, instead of two like the Note 9, and supports more advanced Air Actions that allow users to control the phablet remotely with the pen. This includes changing the camera settings and exporting the handwritten text to

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

remotely. The S Pen on the Galaxy Note 20 features a faster response time than previous models and an extended battery life. The Galaxy S22 Ultra is the first S series phone to include a built-in S Pen, a hallmark feature of the Galaxy Note series. The S Pen has latency at 2.8ms, reduced from 26ms on the Note 20 and 9ms on the Note 20 Ultra and S21 Ultra. The Galaxy S25 Ultra S Pen lacks Bluetooth.

Third-party pens

Compatible Galaxy devices for the S Pen make use of

EMR technology, meaning that third-party pens made for the same technology will also work other than the S Pen. This includes the Hi-Uni Digital Mitsubishi Pencil, the

Staedtler Staedtler SE () is a German multinational stationery manufacturing company based in Nuremberg. The firm was founded by J.S. Staedtler (1800–1872) in 1835 and produces a large variety of stationery products, such as writing implements (includin ...

Noris Digital, the

LAMY Lamy ( /ˈlɑːmi, ˈlæmi/) is a German pen manufacturing company founded in 1930 by Josef Lamy, a former sales representative for Parker Pen. The company acquired the Orthos pen manufacturer to begin production. Lamy offers a variety of ...

AL-star black, EMR, as well as the Wacom One Pen.

Compatible devices

* Galaxy Note series * Galaxy Tab series **Tab S: all models since S3 (except S5e) **Tab A: Tab A 8.0 (2015/2019), Tab A 9.7 and Tab A 10.1 (2016) only **Tab Active: all models * Galaxy S series: all "Ultra" models since

S21 Ultra The Samsung Galaxy S21 is a series of high-end Android-based smartphones developed, marketed, and manufactured by Samsung Electronics as part of its Galaxy S series. They collectively serve as the successor to the Samsung Galaxy S20 series. Th ...

(bundled with Ultra models starting from S22 Ultra) *

Galaxy Z series The Samsung Galaxy Z series (named as Samsung Galaxy Foldables in certain territories) is a line of foldable smartphones manufactured by Samsung Electronics since 2019, part of the wider range of Samsung Galaxy products. The Z series consists of ...

: **Z Fold: all models since Z Fold 3 (unbundled) *

: Book, Book2, Flex, Flex α, all "Pro 360" models *

: 9 Pen, 9 Pro (other pen-enabled models like 7 Spin use the ''Active Pen'') *

Samsung Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

: Plus, Pro, Galaxy Chromebook (Galaxy Chromebook 2 uses ''USI'') * Samsung Ativ: Tab 3, Tab 5, Tab 7

Specifications comparison

References

External links