Korean Outlet Claims S Pen is Returning for Fold 8
According to a report from Korea Economic TV (WOWTV), Samsung may be bringing the S Pen back to its foldable lineup this summer. The report suggests that Samsung is planning to hold its next Galaxy Unpacked event in London on July 22, 2026, where they will introduce a version of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 with a wider aspect ratio, rumored to be around 4:3. Before we go to deep, I do want to encourage everyone to take this report with a pinch of salt as I cannot vouch for this source. Treat it as a rumor for now.
While the S Pen was removed from the Fold 7 to make the device thinner, this new report indicates it will return for the Fold 8 cycle. However, the article suggests that the wider version of the Fold 8 is the specific model getting the pen support, and it notably mentions that Samsung plans to introduce the S Pen "sequentially" after the initial debut. This phrasing raises a big question about the launch: it implies that while the phone might be revealed in July, the stylus functionality or the actual pen itself might not be ready the moment the device hits shelves.
Plenty of foldables already have an active stylus
This shift leads directly into the work Samsung is doing with the S Pen. For a long time, the stylus has been a bit of a double-edged sword for the Z Fold line. To make the Z Fold 7 as thin as possible, Samsung actually had to remove the digitizer layer from the screen, which unfortunately meant dropping S Pen support entirely for that model. This has clearly been a point of friction for power users, and Samsung's Won-Joon Choi has already confirmed that the company is actively working on a way to fix this without adding back the bulk.
He told Bloomberg that they are working on a "more advanced technology within the S Pen to come up with a new structure of display, so the penalty of having the S Pen is diminished." He reiterated that the S Pen will continue to be one of their core technologies. The "penalty" he mentioned is the physical space and weight that the traditional EMR digitizer adds to the display stack.
The shift to an active stylus seems to be the key to overcoming this. Traditional S Pens require that bulky digitizer layer under the screen, but an active stylus houses its own power and communication tech, allowing it to work directly with the standard touch layer. This technology would explain how Samsung could potentially make this wider version of the Fold 8 even thinner than its predecessors while still supporting the pen.
Because an active stylus relies on the standard touch interface rather than a specialized physical layer in the hardware, it raises further questions about that "sequential" rollout. If the hardware is ready at launch, a delay for the pen might simply be for software optimization or to ensure the new active pen is fully polished. It also means there shouldn't be a hardware reason to keep it exclusive to the wider model. It is possible the S Pen could technically work on both the standard aspect ratio Fold 8 and the wider 4:3 version, unless Samsung decides to limit it to the premium model to distinguish the two devices.
An active stylus would also fix the long-standing issue of magnetic interference, which has previously made it difficult for Samsung to adopt magnetic charging standards like Qi2 on foldable devices. Overall, the return of the S Pen suggests Samsung is finding a way to bring back the features power users want without sacrificing the thinness of the hardware, even if we have to wait a little while after the phone launches to get our hands on the pen.
