Samsung may finally bid farewell to its Galaxy Note series next year. According to Korean tech blog The Elec, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and Galaxy Note 20 could be the last Note-branded devices the company ships.

Instead, Samsung may offer the S Pen with the next top-of-the-line Galaxy S model, the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The regular Galaxy S21 and S21 Plus (if Samsung continues its three-pillar strategy and naming system for current models) will not feature a stylus; the Galaxy S21 Ultra is said to be codenamed "Unbound."

Samsung may also include an S Pen in the Galaxy Z Fold 3 (the 2021 iteration of its flagship tablet foldable device), following the release of the Galaxy Z Fold 2 in the coming weeks.

Samsung's reluctance to include an S Pen in its foldable devices is partly due to concerns about the durability of repeatedly poking and scribbling on the ultra-thin glass. The company would undoubtedly want to strengthen the material to ensure that it can withstand rough handling by the stylus.

Now, it is worth pointing out that this is not the first time Samsung has been rumored to discontinue the Note series. Last September, when Samsung was in the process of announcing the Galaxy Note 10 series, Evan Blass said that the tech giant was actively considering integrating the Galaxy S and Note lines into a single family of first-half devices because of their "very close overlap in features." tweeted.

In this scenario, the Galaxy Z Fold family would slide naturally into place of the Note announcement, which usually dominates the end of the year for Samsung.

What we are hearing from Korea now may be the realization of that strategy: after two generations of foldable devices, perhaps the company feels now is the time to make that change.

It is not something to be taken lightly; as SamMobile points out, the company's inability to produce foldable displays with the same frequency as traditional ones will result in a significant decline in overall handset shipments. At present, Samsung can produce roughly 600,000 foldable panels per month. Conversely, the company has shipped about 10 million Galaxy Note devices between the time they were traditionally announced and the end of the year, the blog said.

This is because there is not much separating Samsung's phablets and its flagship phones without a stylus anymore. Both the Galaxy S20 Ultra and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra have exactly the same 6.9-inch display. On the flip side, there is a branding advantage to keeping the Note name in some form.

With the Note 20 still to be announced and the Galaxy S21 six or seven months away, it seems unlikely that we will get any more insight on this topic for some time. Nevertheless, the S21 launch cycle should provide a lot of information about whether Samsung intends to keep the Note line around one more time. If the S21 Ultra is going to tout the S Pen, the writing is very likely to be on the wall.