News

Uber To Add Blade Air Taxi Bookings Through Its App

Joby Aviation will integrate Blade’s air mobility service into the Uber app from 2026, linking airports and cities with quiet, zero-emission electric aircraft.

Published

11 months ago

September 11, 2025

Nour Nasir

uber to add blade taxi bookings through its app

Electric air taxi firm Joby Aviation and Uber will begin integrating Blade’s urban air mobility services into the Uber app as early as 2026, following Joby’s acquisition of Blade’s passenger business this summer.

Blade carried more than 50,000 passengers in 2024 across New York and Southern Europe, linking high-demand routes such as Newark, JFK, Manhattan and the Hamptons. Once folded into Uber, Blade flights will be bookable alongside ground rides, giving users faster, seamless connections in congested cities.

Joby and Uber have been partners in advanced air mobility since 2019, with Joby acquiring Uber’s Elevate division in 2021. That deal gave Joby tools for market modelling and multimodal integration. The Blade acquisition extends that partnership by adding a ready-made network of landing sites and passenger lounges.

Joby’s electric aircraft, designed to carry four passengers and a pilot at speeds up to 200 mph, promises an acoustic footprint far quieter than helicopters and aims to launch in cities including Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, the UK and Japan.

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby pitched the integration as both a practical step and a long-term signal: “We’re excited to introduce Uber customers to the magic of seamless urban air travel. Integrating Blade into the Uber app is the natural next step in our global partnership with Uber and will lay the foundation for the introduction of our quiet, zero-emissions aircraft in the years ahead. Together with Uber’s global platform and Blade’s proven network, we’re setting the stage for a new era of air travel worldwide”.

Also Read: KAUST Mathematical Model Tackles 5G Interference With Aircraft

Andrew Macdonald, president and COO of Uber, added: “By harnessing the scale of the Uber platform and partnering with Joby, the industry leader in advanced air mobility, we’re excited to bring our customers the next generation of travel”.

For Uber, adding air mobility is less about novelty than keeping users inside its platform for every leg of a journey.

News

Samsung’s Fold Goes Wide, And The Whole Galaxy Range Gets Pricier

A new titanium build and a first-of-its-kind AI chip for wearables anchor the range, yet native Qi2 charging still isn’t part of the deal.

Published

3 days ago

July 23, 2026

Dana Saadeh

Samsung

Samsung has run its Galaxy foldable and smartwatch reveals in July for several years now, which is likely a deliberate way of jumping early on the autumn hardware calendar. The 2026 event stuck to the same timings, though prices climbed too, albeit unevenly: $100 on the Flip, a new $2,100 Ultra tier above last year’s flagship, and $30 to $50 on the watches.

At the top sits the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra at $2,100, a slab that measures just 4.1mm open and carries a 200MP main sensor, a 5,000mAh battery and an 8-inch interior display. Beneath it, the $1,900 Galaxy Z Fold 8 makes the more interesting bet. Samsung has stepped away from the tall, narrow shape it spent recent generations refining: the Fold 8 folds horizontally, so it’s wider than it is tall, with a 4:3 interior screen that sits about 9mm wider than the Ultra when closed. It drops the telephoto lens but gains battery, at 4,800mAh.

The clamshell Galaxy Z Flip 8 rounds out the phones at $1,200, up from the Flip 7’s $1,100, which was itself up from the $1,000 Flip 5.

All three devices run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy and share a new Flex Titanium construction, a titanium alloy layer set beneath the flexible OLED that Samsung says strengthens display support, absorbs impact and reduces crease visibility. The progress has limits: none of the phones support Qi2 charging natively, 18 months after the Qi2-ready Galaxy S25. That means buyers will still need a magnetic case to get the most from a Qi2 charger.

The wearables move in the same upward direction. The Galaxy Watch 9 ($380 Bluetooth, $430 LTE) and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 ($700) both run Qualcomm’s 3nm Snapdragon Wear Elite, the first wearable chip with a dedicated Hexagon NPU capable of supporting AI models with two billion parameters. The Ultra 2 is 12 percent thinner than its predecessor despite an 800mAh battery and a display reaching 5,000 nits.

Also Read: Dubai Police Finishes 65 Projects, Says AI Is The Next Priority

Pre-orders open today. The devices are set to reach shelves on August 7.