The Galaxy S24 Ultra’s S Pen may malfunction with your MagSafe case

The year has just begun, and we’ve already seen a plethora of launches, first at the CES extravaganza and more recently at the Galaxy Unpacked event where Samsung launched the Galaxy S24 line. While there was a lot of chatter about all the AI features coming to these phones, the hardware has remained unchanged for the most part. That also means the phones are still stuck with the old Qi standard. And if you plan to make up for that with a MagSafe-compatible case for your brand-new Galaxy S24 Ultra, chances are it will break your phone’s S Pen functions.

Wireless charging is supposed to make topping up your phone convenient, but you often need to find the perfect spot to place the phone for it to start charging. With magnetic attachment introduced on the latest Qi2 standard along the lines of Apple’s MagSafe, the phone automatically aligns perfectly on a single try. For devices that don’t support the Qi2 standard, you can add the magnetic features with a MagSafe case, but that’s exactly what’s causing the problem with the newly launched Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Unlike many flagship Android phones adopting Qi2 wireless charging, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is still stuck with the previous-gen technology. Samsung told us that the phone was already in development when the latest standard was released. But the users who’ve tried to make up for that with a third-party case have been encountering issues with the S Pen, as you can see in the video above. The case’s magnets interfere with the S Pen, causing it to malfunction when scribbling something on the screen.

As the video shows, the case itself may not cause the problem when it’s on the phone. But the S Pen will start behaving erratically when you have an accessory attached. You can remove that accessory as a temporary fix, but that won’t always be a viable solution or even convenient, for that matter, like in case you have a wallet attached. The Twitter user shared that the case makers are working on finding a solution to this peculiar problem, which may mean your case could get delayed.

In the meantime, you can instead go for first-party cases or some of the best third-party cases for the Galaxy S24 Ultra without MagSafe support. Either way, it’s recommended to keep your brand-new phone protected from drops and scratches until third-party case makers find a fix. And as you’d guess, this is not at all a problem on the Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S24 Plus since they don’t have S Pen support, so you can get yourself a nice MagSafe case for these two phones at launch. A more concrete resolution is possible only when Samsung adds the Qi2 standard, hopefully on 2025 flagships if not sooner on this year’s Galaxy Z foldables.