You no longer have to splurge on a giant Galaxy Note to use a stylus with your Samsung phone. The Galaxy S21 Ultra, which launched in February, also supports the Samsung S pen – although you have to buy one and store it separately, because, unlike the Note, the S21 Ultra does not have an integrated pen slot.
But if you decide to buy an S Pen (or if you already have a Wacom-compatible pen in hand), you can use it to do a lot of cool things with your S21 Ultra.
You do not need to pair the pen with the phone; it automatically recognizes the S Pen when you hover over your screen. From there, you can see a number of options by tapping the floating button that appears on the screen.
You can take notes and draw on Ultra and, in Live Messages, draw your own emojis, create GIFs and doodle notes on photos. Selecting AR Doodle allows you to draw with the S Pen in 3D space. Or you can use Smart Select, which allows you to select, crop and collect images or videos to quickly share with friends.
For now, the S21’s S The pen may not do exactly the same things as a Galaxy Note, but Samsung hopes to launch an even more sophisticated and more expensive S Pen Pro in the future (although the company did not say when). This more advanced stylus will allow you to use it as a remote shutter for your phone’s camera and unlock Air Gestures, similar to what you can do with the Galaxy Note stylus.