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 Samsung’s S Pen, although you’ll have to buy one and keep it separately as unlike the Note, the S21 Ultra doesn’t have a built-in stylus slot.
But if you decide to buy an S Pen (or if you already have a Wacom compatible stylus on hand), you can use it to do a ton of cool things with your S21 Ultra.
You don’t need to pair the stylus with your phone; it automatically recognizes the S Pen when you move the mouse pointer across the screen. From there, you can view a slew of options by tapping the floating button that appears on the screen.
You can annotate and draw on the Ultra, and in Live Messages you can draw your own emojis, create GIFs and annotate photos. If you select AR Doodle, you can draw in 3D space with the S Pen. Or you can use Smart Select, which allows you to select, cut and collect images or videos for quick sharing with friends.
For now, the S21’s S Pen can’t do the exact same things as a Galaxy Note, but Samsung is expected to release an even nicer and more expensive S Pen Pro sometime in the future (although the company hasn’t said when). With that more advanced stylus, you can use it as an external shutter for your phone’s camera and unlock Air Gestures, similar to what you can achieve with the Galaxy Note’s stylus.