Ras Tanura is where Saudi crude has left the country since the 1940s: an Aramco refinery, enormous tank farms and the export terminals that sit alongside them on the Gulf coast. This page is for the operators, marine and inspection staff and the HSE and telecoms teams who equip people working inside those classified areas. Often searched for as an “explosion proof phone”, the IS-04Z1 uses intrinsic safety as its protection concept.
Launching Q4 2026 · certification in progress
Ras Tanura is really two things sharing a peninsula. One is a refinery with a distillation capacity of around 550,000 barrels a day, split between a crude unit and a large gas condensate unit, with NGL fractionation alongside it. The other is an export complex: a tank farm holding tens of millions of barrels, the Ras Tanura terminal itself, the Ju’aymah crude terminal loading through offshore single point moorings, and a separate Ju’aymah terminal for LPG and NGL. Between them they make this one of the largest crude export facilities in the world. There is also a long-established Aramco community here, with a hospital and a training school, which is the part of the peninsula that is not classified. Almost everything on the working side is, including the pipework and moorings that sit offshore.
Most of the awkward work here happens over water or on a tank farm, at distance from any building. That is a different problem from a process plant, and it is what the specification has to answer.
A sea island berth and an offshore mooring are exposed, salt-soaked and a long way from a charging point or a spare. IP68 sealing, rugged build and the 4,000 mAh cell are what let a device stay with a person for a whole loading operation rather than half of one.
Walking a tank farm of this size takes hours and passes through classified bunds the whole way. Four-constellation GNSS puts an exact position on a report where every tank looks like the last one, and the 50 MP camera with PDAF makes a photograph of a seal or a valve legible back in the office.
Light ends, propane and butane are not the same hazard as stabilised crude, and they set the gas group and temperature class the equipment has to meet. The ATEX marking target for the IS-04Z1 is II 2 G Ex ib IIC T4, which is the string an Aramco instrumentation reviewer will check first.
Summer here runs well above 45 °C with high humidity and airborne salt, a combination that finds any weakness in a seal or a connector. The device is designed for that, and the temperature class on the certificate is what governs whether it may be carried at all.
Photography on an Aramco facility runs on a permit. The useful answer is not a device without a camera but one whose camera your own management console can disable by policy, which is what Android 16 with EMM and MDM enrolment provides.
A loading master works between the ship, the tank farm and the berth, outdoors and often over water. NFC reads at the arm, photographs of the connection and a call back to the control room run from one intrinsically safe handset instead of a radio, a camera and a trip back inside.
A round through the crude and condensate units means logging readings and reporting defects from inside the classified boundary. One device carrying the round application, the camera and the phone removes the walk back to the safe area that each of those tasks forces today.
Inspectors covering tanks, bunds and transfer lines produce most of their evidence as photographs tied to a location. A handset that can be carried through the whole survey, with a position on every image, is the difference between one pass and two.
No. The IS-04Z1 is pre-launch, launching Q4 2026, and IECEx, ATEX and NEC 500 certification are all in progress. Nothing is supplied into a classified area before the certificate covering it is issued. The datasheet, a written certification schedule and an evaluation unit for safe-area trials are available today.
There is no list price yet and we do not quote lead times while certification is running. Pre-launch pricing is given in writing against a stated quantity and configuration, and volume supply into the Kingdom is planned through a partner holding the relevant vendor registrations.
That decision is Aramco’s and it follows the certificates rather than preceding them. Aramco runs an approved-vendor process with material specifications above the national standard, and the IECEx certificate is the technical evidence that process is built on. The SASO and SABER route into the Kingdom is covered on the Saudi Arabia page.
Zone 1 and Zone 21, gas and dust. On a site like this the gas case governs almost everywhere, but sulphur handling and bulk solids can bring dust classification in too, and one device designed for both avoids a second equipment decision.
It is designed for exactly that kind of exposure, with IP68 sealing, rugged build and full-shift endurance, subject to the certificate and to Aramco marine approval. We will not claim marine or offshore suitability beyond what the certification covers once it is issued.
An Ex-certified device cannot be opened or repaired by a general phone workshop without invalidating its certification, so the service route runs through SAMS and the Saudi partner it is appointing. Spares holding in the Eastern Province is part of the partner discussion now under way.
Tell us the site, the zone and gas group, and roughly how many handsets. The SAMS team replies by email with the datasheet and the certification schedule for Saudi Arabia. The IS-04Z1 is pre-launch and certification is in progress, so there is no list price yet; indicative pricing is issued in writing against a stated quantity and site.
Tell us the zone, gas group and operator. We will send the datasheet and the certification schedule for your market.
