The S Pen was introduced with the
Galaxy Note series, the first "
phablet", in 2011. The stylus has an
active digitizer by
Wacom, with the first generation having 128 levels of pressure sensitivity. A button on the side of the pen can be used to activate special pen-oriented features and gestures in the system software. The second generation S Pen on the
Galaxy Note II is slightly thicker than in the original Galaxy Note, and a feature marketed as
Air View allows a user to preview content by hovering the pen over the content, similar to the
hoverbox feature of a mouse in some desktop computers, such as thumbnails in the gallery and a preview tooltip on the video player's time seek bar, and zooming in the web browser (
Samsung Internet) and for scrolling. On the
Galaxy Note 7, the OS featured several new tools supporting the S Pen stylus, including translation, a
screen magnifier, and a
GIF recording tool. The previous suite of note-taking apps was also consolidated into a single Samsung Notes app. The S Pen on the
Galaxy Note 8 offers expanded software features, including "Live Message" for the creation of handwritten notes combined with emojis resulting in short animated
GIFs. Users can remove the S Pen from the device and immediately write notes on the display through "Screen Off Memo," which works due to the screen's always-on capabilities. Starting from the
Galaxy Note 9 and ending with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the S Pen has
Bluetooth capabilities, including the ability to tap the button on the pen to do certain tasks. On the
Galaxy Note 10, the pen is one piece of plastic, instead of two like the Note 9, and supports more advanced Air Actions that allow users to control the phablet remotely with the pen. This includes changing the camera settings and exporting the handwritten text to
Microsoft Word remotely. The S Pen on the
Galaxy Note 20 features a faster response time than previous models and an extended battery life. The
Galaxy S22 Ultra is the first S series phone to include a built-in S Pen, a hallmark feature of the Galaxy Note series. The S Pen has latency at 2.8ms, reduced from 26ms on the Note 20 and 9ms on the Note 20 Ultra and S21 Ultra. The
Galaxy S25 Ultra S Pen lacks Bluetooth. ==Third-party pens==