Galaxy Z Fold 4 Leak Includes Bad News About The S Pen

Samsung has pretty much stood unchallenged in the foldable phone market for nearly three years. Although competing devices from Huawei and Xiaomi do exist, their limited availability isn't much of a threat to Samsung's market share, especially since the latter company has two kinds of foldable phones to sell. Things may start changing, however, now that other players have jumped into the arena, especially with the Oppo Find N challenging the concept of the ideal foldable phone. Of course, Samsung still has a lot of advantages, especially in features, but if the most recent leaks are to be believed, users will again be disappointed in the Galaxy Z Fold 4 for one specific reason.

Last year's Galaxy Z Fold 3 finally fulfilled one of the big dreams involving phones that can transform into tablets: it introduced support for the S Pen, albeit a new kind of S Pen that is compatible with previous versions. The addition of a stylus offered consumers the feeling of having a digital notebook in their pocket all the time for jotting notes or even making art, all on a much larger screen than any Galaxy Note phone could ever provide.

That addition, unfortunately, also came with a catch. As with the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the Fold 3 lacks a dedicated slot for holding the larger S Pen, which resulted in quite a number of complaints, especially when it came to the lack of good cases designed to hold both the phone and the stylus. Considering that the Galaxy S22 Ultra includes an S Pen slot, many have hoped the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 4 model will follow suit. That, unfortunately, might not be the case.

One of the criticisms of the Galaxy Z Fold is its sheer size. The Oppo Find N foldable offers a smaller and slightly more usable form factor, which raises questions about whether Samsung's design has moved in the right direction. It seems the Galaxy Z Fold 4 will tweak things a bit in that regard, but the change may come with a difficult compromise for those hoping for a better foldable.

According to notable leaker @Ice universe, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 will be thinner and smaller than its predecessors — probably not as small as the Oppo Find N, but every size reduction counts in this case. For reference, the current Galaxy Z Fold 3 foldable is unwieldy, especially when folded, so it will be interesting to see how Samsung addresses this design flaw.

Unfortunately, such a change may mean there won't be enough space to dock the S Pen within the phone. Even if the S Pen Fold Edition was reduced to the size of the typical S Pen stylus, it might still be too big or long to fit inside this supposedly slimmer foldable phone. Sadly, buyers will again be left with having to choose whether to get the S Pen or not, but hopefully, Samsung will provide more useful phone cases for the Galaxy Z Fold 4 that accommodate the stylus this time around.