Samsung shelves s pen overhaul, keeps thickness and qi2 in limbo

Samsung just slammed the brakes on the only plan that could have made the Galaxy S27 Ultra both thinner and Qi2-ready, according to a weekend report from Seoul’s ETnews. The Korean giant has quietly paused its bid to strip the display of the electromagnetic digitizer that has powered the S Pen since 2011, leaving next year’s flagship looking like a carbon copy—same pen, same girth, same wireless-charging headache.

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Inside the MX division, engineers had spent months flirting with a hybrid stylus that married active-electrostatic tech with a slimmed-down EMR coil. The promise: ditch the bulky digitizer, shave tenths of a millimetre off the chassis, and finally clear space for the magnets that Qi2 demands. But the chemistry never stabilized. Sources tell ETnews that calibration yields hovered below 80 %, and latency spikes turned handwriting into a jittery Morse code. Samsung’s COO, Won-Joon Choi, hinted at a “new display structure” in February; by May the whiteboards were erased.

The casualty list is longer than a spec sheet. Fold 7 buyers already lost holster-free S Pen input when Samsung yanked the coil to hit 4.2 mm unfolded. Now Ultra loyalists must accept that the S27 will ship with the same fat coil as the S25, locking thickness at roughly 8.2 mm and keeping Qi2 on the accessory dock, not inside the phone. Case makers who tooled up for magnetic rings are sitting on inventory that may not move until 2027.

Wall Street’s reaction was a collective shrug—Samsung’s stock slipped 0.8 % on Kospi trading—but inside the supply chain the reverberations are real. EMR digitizer orders from South Korean fabs remain flat through Q2 2026, while Chinese vendors peddling AES pens have been told to “check back later.” Translation: no new BOM, no new revenue.

Consumers obsessed with waistlines may scoff, yet the numbers show why Samsung blinked. The S25 Edge—hailed at launch as “the thinnest Galaxy ever”—moved barely 1.3 million units in its first quarter, trailing the vanilla S25 by 40 %. Apple’s own Air experiment is rumored to be shelved until 2027. The market has spoken: shaving millimetres no longer moves needles.

So the S27 Ultra will arrive next January wrapped in familiar aluminium, its stylus bay housing the same grey pen we’ve clicked in and out since the Note 20. Qi2 charging will still require a puck-on-a-string, and the digitizer will keep humming beneath the glass like a relic that refuses to retire. Samsung could have leapt into unproven waters; instead it chose the comfort of a technology that works, even if it bulges the pocket ever so slightly. In a year when foldables cracked and AI features hallucinated, clinging to a pen that actually writes might be the most honest move the Korean titan has made in a decade.