Ship traffic through Bab el-Mandeb fell on Sunday after Yemeni Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations along the Red Sea coast, while transit through the Strait of Hormuz stayed low over the weekend, shipping data from Kpler showed on Monday.

Eleven commodity vessels passed through the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Sunday, the lowest level in months, the data showed.

Red Sea traffic has been disrupted off the coast of Yemen since last week by the Houthis, who want to blockade Saudi exports, expanding the US-Iran conflict that has already choked oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz.

The shipping disruption caused prices of physical crude cargoes in the Middle East, Europe and Africa to jump to two-month highs last week.

Seven of the vessels that passed through Bab el-Mandeb were oil tankers with three of them entering the Red Sea. Two of them are very large crude carriers (VLCCs) heading to the port of Yanbu to load Saudi crude while the third is a Russian-linked ship, the data showed.

The four vessels that exited the Red Sea on Sunday included the Hong Kong-flagged VLCC New Explorer carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi and Emirati crude for eastern China’s Ningbo port, a tanker carrying 1 million barrels of Russian crude for China and a tanker with about 750,000 barrels of Saudi crude onboard for Pakistan, the data showed.

Another Hong Kong-flagged VLCC New Pearl carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude is exiting the Red Sea via Bab el-Mandeb strait for eastern China’s Zhoushan port, the fourth Chinese supertanker to leave since the Houthis declared a naval blockade.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group struck sites belonging to Saudi state oil company Aramco in the cities of Jizan and Yanbu on Saturday.

Strait of Hormuz

Fewer than 10 commodity vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz daily over the weekend even though the US and Iran have paused strikes in the Middle East, shipping data from Kpler showed.

Seven vessels transited on Sunday including three Iranian-linked oil products tankers that exited the Strait, the data showed.

On Saturday, there were only three vessels that passed through with their transponders switched off. These include a VLCC heading to Qatar to load oil, a liquefied petroleum gas tanker going to the Ruwais port in the United Arab Emirates to load a cargo and a tanker carrying Qatari naphtha that was heading to Japan, the data showed.

On Friday, seven vessels passed, mostly exiting the Gulf, including two VLCCs carrying crude from Iraq and the UAE and a tanker carrying fuel oil.

TikTok has released its first Economic Impact Report for the UAE. What were the biggest findings for you, and what did the report reveal about how the platform has evolved over the past few years?

TikTok started as an entertainment platform, but it has evolved considerably. What trends are shaping the platform’s future and its role in the creative economy?

As governments introduce new regulations around digital platforms, how is TikTok ensuring it remains a responsible platform?

Looking ahead, what excites you most about TikTok’s future?

What are some of the biggest challenges TikTok faces in this region?

How important is the UAE to TikTok’s regional strategy?

When Samsung launched the original Galaxy Fold in 2019, the category did not exist, and the reception was sceptical. Seven generations on, the question is no longer whether foldables work, but how many different kinds a single lineup should contain.

Samsung’s answer this year is three. The Galaxy Z Fold8 is built around a new, wider form factor aimed at media consumption, a 10:16 cover screen when folded, opening to a 4:3 main display, and at 201g the lightest Z Fold the company has made. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra keeps the taller shape and the flagship camera system, with an 8-inch main display, a 200MP main camera and a body that measures just 4.1mm unfolded. The Galaxy Z Flip8 is the slimmest and lightest Flip yet at 180g and 6.1mm. Alongside them come two wearables, the Galaxy Watch9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra2.

UAE pricing starts at Dhs4,699 for the Flip8 and runs to Dhs10,399 for the 1TB Fold8 Ultra. Pre-orders opened on July 22 and will run until August 6.

Ahead of the launch, Gulf Business sat down with Fadi Abu Shamat, VP and Head of the Mobile eXperience Division at Samsung Gulf Electronics, to discuss the thinking behind the split and the considerably harder commercial environment it lands in.

So many of the functions in this device are things I hadn’t even thought about. How much user input went into developing them?

It’s one thing to push a technology on a consumer without them asking for it, or a technology that doesn’t solve a single problem. Maybe some companies were successful in doing that, but for the most part, the most successful innovations, products, or ideas come from the voice of the consumer.

The way we see things is that the era of a universal foldable phone is over, there can’t be one device that fits all the use cases. The flip came from the consumer. It caters to a specific need. Either you want a pocketable phone that fits literally in the front of your hands, or you need something that gives you that glanceability option.

At the same time, we listened to consumers who said, “We love the foldables, but we really need a video consumption, a media consumption device.” That’s where the Fold8 comes in, with a new form factor tailored to that feedback. And of course, we have the Ultra, which, as the name implies, is the Ultra performance, the Ultra productivity, the Ultra camera system.

All of this came from feedback. It didn’t start from the R&D, it didn’t start from the engineering department. It started from listening to the consumers.

Including the aspect ratio?

Absolutely. We talk every year, and I hear this — “Fadi, we love your foldable devices, it’s just that the aspect ratio is not for me. The aspect ratio is limiting my ability to text easily on the cover page”.

All this feedback goes back. Every meeting, I tell you, please do share the feedback. I personally put it in a document and share it back to headquarters myself, and I imagine all my other colleagues globally do the same. It really helps us to shape the coming iterations.

These phones keep getting thinner, but they also need to be more durable; increasingly, they’re business and creator tools, not lifestyle devices. What’s gone into that?

We started the foldable category, and this is now the eighth generation. With every generation, our goal has been to make foldables more mainstream. For that to happen, they cannot be devices that feel fragile or need to be used only under perfect conditions.

We are introducing improvements to the outer glass protection, along with innovations to the inner foldable display. This year, we are introducing Flex Titanium, a new display structure designed to improve durability while supporting the inner screen. It helps reduce crease visibility and creates a smoother, more refined folding experience.

Flex Titanium combines a titanium-alloy film with an enhanced titanium plate. The structure is designed to strengthen display support, help absorb pressure and impact, and improve long-term crease performance by balancing display tension, hinge mechanics and magnetic force.

What’s the fold test rating this generation?

I think we’re way past how many times it can fold and unfold. At the end of the day, we’re promising the end user seven years of security updates and Android updates. That is not an easy thing, we’re talking about an industry that goes on average two to four years. So, the hardware itself needs to be durable, safe, and function for seven years.

There’s no S Pen support. Why?

At the end of the day, there are still loads of physics and engineering and science, and it boils down to a certain choice. I don’t want to say compromise, but eventually it’s a choice.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that there’s absolutely no use case for the S Pen. That’s not the case. But it boils down to either a slightly thicker, slightly heavier device with an S Pen-enabled feature, or a more streamlined, lighter, bigger battery, more portable and convenient device without the S Pen.
Based on usage habits and consumer feedback, we currently see that portability, lightweight design, and durability outweigh the need for the S Pen. Every generation, we introduce new features. So, who knows?

You now have three form factors to optimise software for, plus a seven-year update commitment. How hard is that?

When we say seven years of software, Android and security updates, that means we need to hold the two pillars at once. So, we expanded our software R&D. There are dedicated teams for each family of devices.

In the last two years, I think we have outdone Google themselves. Google pushes the beta version on their phones, but the official, publicly stable version, for example, Android 17, will be the first device to introduce it to the market.

Every SKU caters for a different use case. The way we see it, the Fold8 Ultra is a pocketable, portable production house. You’ll be able to enjoy the 200-megapixel camera fully. You’ll be able to shoot 8K video through the new APV codec, and then edit it on the eight-inch inner screen. You’ll have your video editing software open, your audio editing tool at the same time, and a second script written on the side. Is this going to be the everyday case? Not really. But the possibility is now there.

And heat management, at that thinness?

When I first saw the device in the testing labs, I was blown away. I said, how? A device that thin, with a 5,000mAh battery and 45-watt charging, and heat management is still there at heart. It’s an expanded cooling structure, improved software management that will manage the efficiency of the electricity and how the device consumes power, and at the same time stay cool in our GCC hot environment.

Software is literally the heart. I know a lot of people think the hardware is the heart of the machine. It’s the software.

The Fold8 Ultra pairs a 5,000mAh dual battery with a new dual-path charging architecture and 45W fast charging, and uses an expanded graphite cooling structure for improved thermal conductivity. Both Fold models run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform for Galaxy; the Flip8 uses Samsung’s own Exynos 2600.

Is the AI tailored per device, or is it the same layer across all three?

The ethos we started with on the Galaxy S24, when we moved from a smartphone to an AI phone, was that it’s not a competition between the user and the AI, who’s smarter, who’s harder at work. It’s totally the other way around. AI is at the service of the user. And to genuinely cater to that, AI needs to fit every use case.

The Flip8 is a phone that was designed by heart for AI. You have AI on the outside screen — you can dictate your memos, have the AI summarise and share them immediately from the cover screen. On the Ultra, you have AI summarising, translating, and publishing to your favourite publishing app.

On the Fold8, the new form factor will allow you to brilliantly browse the web: on one side, you’re watching a YouTube video, and on the other, you have multiple LLMs working to summarise it, to make it into an infographic, whatever your use case is.

And agentic AI?

The next iteration of AI will be agentic AI. All of our Z Fold8 families are equipped with an agentic engine under the hood, supporting a large number of apps immediately out of the box. If I’m going to a restaurant, I’ll be able to talk naturally to the device and ask about the restaurant, ask about availability, book the table for me and my guests, and in the very same prompt ask it to give me the map directions or the easiest route to avoid traffic. All of this will be natively done on the phone, and the phone will be able to talk to the apps, the taxi, the maps, and so on. This is the generation we’re aiming to streamline and make mainstream.

Samsung’s launch materials attribute app automation to Gemini Intelligence, working across more than 40 supported apps and services. At launch, the automation feature is available only in the US and South Korea, supporting English and Korean, with Samsung saying supported languages and regions will expand during the year.

Chinese manufacturers are moving fast in this category, and they compete hard on price. What’s the strategy?

At the risk of sounding smug, I am genuinely happy because of all the attention the category is getting. In 2019, when we introduced the first Fold, everyone thought, ‘Who’s going to buy a phone that folds into a tablet?’ Look at us now. I’m being asked a question from a professional journalist about the competition in the category. Seven years ago, people thought we were crazy for venturing there. So, I’m really proud that I was a small part of this journey.

The category is now attractive enough and wide enough to attract all competition, from China and elsewhere. Rather than being worried about it, we created this category, and we’re very proud of it. Competition breeds creativity. Even if you’re the best of the best, if you don’t have competition, if it works, don’t mess with it, right? Competition breeds more genuine effort towards making the product better.

And the three-device strategy is part of that answer?

If we benchmark it simply with the bar type: why is there a bar type with a six-inch screen, and another with a seven-inch screen? Why is one equipped with three or four cameras and another with a single camera? Because even with bar types, there are choices, there are preferences. That ethos is now what we’re seeing in the foldable category. A single offering from other companies is not going to be enough. We cannot expect consumers to change their life habits to fit our product. That’s just a bit egotistical. And it’s a huge undertaking.

Every product requires a software team, a hardware team, and spare parts. All companies are inclined to streamline, to minimise the number of SKUs, to minimise spare parts; the marketing team would appreciate one campaign, one device, just focus on it. The fact that we’re putting ourselves out there with three devices means three customer support teams, three software support teams, three marketing campaigns. I hope the consumer will appreciate that commitment.

What market share are you targeting?

As creators of the category, we tend to enjoy a higher share; as we speak, we enjoy more than 60 per cent.

But the way we see it, we want this device to compete not only in the foldable category, but we also want it to compete in the entire market. We’re that confident that the eighth generation is strong enough to pull from the bar type. I would be more than happy if I found a Galaxy S26 user and brought him to the Fold8.

So now is the time when the foldable category is not only benchmarked within that one segment. We want the Fold8 series to really be part of the overall competition, and we’re confident that soon enough it will constitute more than 50 per cent of our entire flagship business. Soon enough, I think the S and Z families will probably blend into one flagship lineup.

What’s your message to someone fully invested in a competing ecosystem who’s considering the switch?

For the first time, Samsung Smart Switch, which is our own proprietary solution, will give you that peace of mind. Whichever other operating system, any other brand you’re coming from, Smart Switch will be able to absorb all your personal data, including passwords, private applications, the eSIM subscription you have on a previous device or a wearable device. It will migrate them all with ease, cable or wireless.

The test I saw was approximately 180 gigabytes of private data moved in less than two hours. It’s that massive.

Beyond that, Samsung has that vertical and horizontal product line. You’ll be able to enjoy Samsung Smart Home, Samsung TVs, phones and wearables together, and Samsung Health. The message is: whatever features you had before, you’re going to have them and more.

iOS users can now scan a QR code to transfer wirelessly without downloading an app, with Smart Switch carrying over passwords and passkeys, call history, accessibility settings and eSIM data. Quick Share also now works with AirDrop, making file sharing between iOS and Galaxy devices possible in both directions.

Let’s talk about the wearables. What’s new?

This launch is doubly special for us, because we’re not only introducing three new foldable devices, we’ve introduced two new wearables: the Watch9 and the Watch Ultra2.

The Watch Ultra2 boasts a 5,000-nit screen. In a GCC setting, when you’re out there doing whatever sport or activity, the screen will be more than capable of handling Dubai’s scorching sunlight. It’s also 12 per cent thinner, with a significantly bigger battery, and more comfortable to wear.

Samsung says the 5,000-nit display is the brightest fitted to any smartwatch, based on its own market research as of June 2026. The 47mm Ultra2 keeps its shock-resistant titanium casing but drops to 10.7mm thick and 61.5g, and both watches move to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite platform running Wear OS 7 and One UI 9 Watch. The Watch9 comes in 40mm and 44mm aluminium cases with a 3,000-nit display.

Both watches run off our BioActive sensor, and the point is to turn that data into something you can act on rather than just numbers on a screen.
New across both models: an FDA-cleared Sleep Apnea feature using AI algorithms to detect breathing disruptions; Vitals, which monitors a personal baseline during sleep and flags significant deviations; a Heart Health Score with lifestyle recommendations; Daily Cardio Load, which advises on workout volume and recovery; a Fitness Index; and hearing protection alerts for unsafe noise levels. The Ultra2 adds Trail Run, which tracks elevation, climbing progress and terrain impact, and Nutrition Alert, which estimates sweat loss against body weight to prompt hydration during exercise.

This generation of the Watch Ultra2 is a diving-certified instrument. It’s beyond a watch right now. If any of you enjoy diving, you need to buy certified computer equipment — that’s in the thousands of dollars.

The Watch Ultra2 is certified as a diving instrument. It can gauge exactly how deep you’re diving. It will coach you, because you can’t just come up — you need to manage your saturation difference, and it will guide you gradually on how fast you need to ascend. For a casual dive or snorkelling, this is a great device, and you don’t have to buy another one. It’s the same device on your wrist.

The Watch Ultra2 is rated IP69K and 10ATM and carries EN13319 dive certification, with a water resistance rating of 100 metres under ISO 22810. It begins tracking depth, dive time and water temperature automatically on entering the water. The ascent-speed and safe-dive-limit features Abu Shamat describes come via a dedicated Diving app developed with Italian diving equipment maker Mares, which Samsung says will arrive later this year rather than at launch.

What about the battery being a weak point on the smartwatches?

We heard the consumer on that. We’re now talking about an 800mAh battery; we’re coming into smartphone territory. That should be close to a week of average use, and if you’re heavy on sports, 72 hours plus. Fast charging is there, and it’s lighter and more comfortable on the wrist.

At a glance: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 series specifications

Additional display and camera features

Charging and battery notes: Charging figures are based on Samsung laboratory results using a 45W or 25W adapter from zero, with services and screen switched off. Adapters are sold separately. Battery figures are typical values, with rated capacities of 4,854mAh, 4,660mAh and 4,174mAh respectively.

Water resistance note: IP48 ratings are based on submersion in up to 1.5 metres of fresh water for 30 minutes and may diminish with wear.

Samsung’s 5,000-nit figure is localised peak brightness under high ambient light, full-screen brightness differs, and it is based on Samsung’s own market research as of June 2026.

Dubai Municipality has opened an integrated pet shelter in Warsan and launched a digital adoption platform as part of efforts to strengthen animal welfare services and encourage responsible pet ownership in the emirate.

The new facility, located at the Birds and Pets Market in Warsan, provides a dedicated environment for stray and loose companion animals, offering veterinary care, rehabilitation services and adoption support before animals are matched with suitable families.

The shelter is designed to support the sustainable management of stray animal populations while following internationally recognised health and welfare standards, Dubai Municipality said.

The facility includes a veterinary clinic, a surgical operating theatre equipped with advanced veterinary technologies, a pet grooming unit, a rehabilitation area, a pre-adoption viewing space and interactive adoption rooms where prospective owners can meet animals.

It also includes a centre for reuniting lost pets with their owners after verifying identification and ownership details.

Dr Naseem Mohammed Rafei, acting CEO of the Environment, Health and Safety Agency at Dubai Municipality, said the shelter would strengthen the emirate’s veterinary and public health services.

Pet shelter to promote animal welfare

“The opening of the integrated pet shelter marks an important step in the continued development of Dubai Municipality’s public health and veterinary services. The facility enhances our ability to provide sustainable, efficient and proactive services that protect animal welfare and contribute to a higher quality of life across the emirate,” he said.

The shelter supports the “One Health” approach, which recognises the link between human, animal and environmental health, while promoting responsible adoption and pet ownership, he added.

Alongside the facility opening, Dubai Municipality launched a digital adoption platform that allows residents to view animals available for adoption and access information about their health and behavioural profiles.

The platform is intended to simplify the adoption process by helping potential owners make informed decisions based on each animal’s needs.

As part of the initiative, Dubai Municipality has signed memoranda of understanding with Vets Fur Pets Veterinary Clinic and Phoenix Veterinary Clinic to support animal healthcare and welfare programmes.

The partnerships will focus on the treatment and rehabilitation of stray and loose companion animals, community awareness initiatives, knowledge sharing and the implementation of humane animal management programmes.

These include trap-neuter-return (TNR) programmes for stray cats, as well as treatment and care programmes for stray dogs and cats.

Dubai Municipality said it follows a scientific and humane approach to managing stray and loose companion animals, including providing medical care and implementing internationally recognised sterilisation and vaccination programmes.

Under TNR initiatives, stray cats are humanely trapped, neutered and vaccinated where required before being returned to their original locations, provided this does not pose a risk to public safety or animal welfare.

The opening follows the launch earlier this year of Dubai Municipality’s “Ihsan” smart feeding stations, which introduced 12 AI-powered feeding units across several locations in Dubai to support stray and loose companion animals.

The municipality said the initiatives form part of broader efforts to promote animal welfare, sustainability and responsible community practices across Dubai.