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No S Pen support for Samsung's lower-cost Galaxy Z Fold 6 variant, insiders say

By Adrian Diaconescu

Updated: Feb 08, 2024, 6:05 AM

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No S Pen support for Samsung's lower-cost Galaxy Z Fold 6 variant, insiders say

After a few years of essentially doing the same main things in the foldable market segment it's pretty comfortably dominating on a global scale, Samsung is widely expected to turn over a new leaf in 2024 and try to appeal to an even larger audience with several devices in several different price brackets.

While no one knows exactly how many book-style foldables the tech giant is planning to release this year and how each of them will be called, a lot of generally reliable publications and well-connected leakers are predicting the main ultra-high-end Galaxy Z Fold 6 will be joined to market in the summer by at least one lower-cost and lower-end sibling.

Whether it'll be sold under a Galaxy Z Fold 6 FE moniker, Z Fold FE, A Fold, or something else entirely, this still-very-mysterious device is today tipped to lose one feature... many users may not care that much about anyway.

Did you even know the Galaxy Z Fold 5 offers S Pen support?

You probably did if you're an avid follower of everything that moves and changes in the mobile industry every year, but otherwise, it's not like Samsung is very heavily promoting the stylus functionality of its existing Z Fold-series products these days.

That's obviously because the Z Fold 5, just like the Fold 4 and Fold 3 before it, doesn't actually come with an S Pen in the box or a built-in stylus holder like the Galaxy S24 Ultra does. Instead, you need to separately buy a case with a special S Pen attached to it, which is neither very convenient, nor affordable.

If the latest ETNews report (translated here) is to be believed, Samsung will do away with this "inconvenience" altogether for this year's budget-friendly Galaxy Z Fold 6 variant, which should help with reducing production costs as there will be no need to include a digitizer and perform various tests to make sure the stylus input works satisfactorily.

Of course, the lack of the "S Pen function" alone is unlikely to make a world of difference for the price point of this model, so a bunch of other downgrades, compromises, and missing features are to be expected compared to the state-of-the-art Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Unfortunately, almost every single one of those other cost-cutting measures are still under wraps, leaving us presuming that a Galaxy Z Fold 6 FE could come with smaller and/or lower-quality screens, thicker bezels, humbler cameras, less memory and storage, as well as reduced processing power.

What about the standard Galaxy Z Fold 6?

Alas, that one is a pretty big question mark as well, even after a bunch of renders very recently emerged, hinting at major design revisions but not exactly inspiring a lot of confidence as they mostly rely on patents that don't always commercially materialize... very swiftly.

One change that would make a lot of sense right now is a slot for Samsung's signature S Pen, which could finally be embedded into a foldable device and thus help set the "normal" Z Fold 6 apart from its humbler and cheaper brother.

The top-of-the-line Galaxy Z Fold 6 could also be larger than both the Z Fold 6 FE and last year's Z Fold 5, offering more screen real estate both inside and outside of the fold while also potentially rocking an overall thinner profile.

Granted, that sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking on the part of tipsters and leakers at the moment, although it's pretty obvious that Samsung needs to raise the bar in as many departments as possible (ideally, without also raising the price any further) to keep fierce rivals like Huawei, Honor, Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Google, and Motorola at bay.

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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.