The build up to Lenovo's annual Tech World show had sparked rumours of Motorola's iconic Razr flip phones being rebooted – Lenovo bought Motorola in 2014. In reality, the Moto Z and Z Force provide more than any PR-driven refresh could have provided.
Both Android devices pack-in high-end specifications and that's before their modularity has been thrown into the mix.
With their launch, the company has bet the brand's future on modular phones; the result is that both phones can have their capabilities bolstered with units connected to the back.
'Moto Mods,' as the company has called them, provide a number variabilities for customers to extend what their phone can do. As they launch in September, the Z Force will be exclusively available with Verizon for some time, the modules will come in three initial forms - a speaker, projectors and a battery case. In slightly retro-felt addition there are also different styled backing cases that can customise the phones.
To snap onto the phones – the top-end Z Force has a shatterproof screen and 21MP camera, compared to the Gorilla Glass and 13MP camera of the Z – the modules use four magnets built into their casing. Each module comes in at a different size and feels slightly different to peel from the phone once its use has been exhausted. Each module is useable and can be carried in the pocket, but the speaker comes with the greatest depth and only just fits in a regular-sized pocket.
The electronic connection, sending the signal from the phone to the casing, passes through 16 pins on the rear side of the phone. Made from 24 karat goldthe pins, dubbed "magic dots" by Motorola, have been waterproofed to stop them from easily becoming damaged. Each time a module is connected, the signal transfer is met with a beep from the phone around a second after it is connected.
Motorola has promised more modules for the phones are being developed. Aymar De Lencquesaing, senior vice president and co-president of of the mobile business group, told WIRED it is an "open system". To this end it is making a development kit for external developers to access.
Company executives won't reveal some of the external manufacturers they have been working with but say Morphie is working on a 'mod', and an advanced camera is also coming. To encourage external developers a $1m equity fund has been set-up for the individual or company that creates the "best" module. Motorola also revealed future versions of the Z will be compatible with mods that are created now.
The sticking point for the modules though will come with their price. Neither Motorola or Lenovo has revealed exact pricing for the modules and it's likely the high-end additions will not be coming cheap.
"It's an additional cost. But the price of the phone will be competitive and the mods are going to be competitive as well. They will range in price from $50 to a couple of hundred dollars," De Lencquesaing says. The price of either phone hasn't been revealed yet.
When the phones don't have modules connected they are thin devices. The Force has a depth of 6.99mm and the Z is a slender 5.19mm deep. Both are slimmer than the iPhone 6S (7.1mm) and their narrowness can be felt from just a few minutes in the hand.
This is helped by the fact Motorola has ditched the 3.5mm headphone jack. Instead, the phones have USB-C ports for headphones, charging and data transfer, but come with 3.5 mm to USB-C headphone port adapters included. The, slightly controversial, change is something Apple is reportedly working on for its iPhone 7.
This means people will need to buy one of the few pairs of Type-C headphones on the market, rely on the adapter or use Bluetooth headphones until the port becomes more mainstream. Motorola's phones run low-power Bluetooth so this shouldn't impact on battery life too much, but it is a consideration.
Both phones are comfortable to hold in the hand and when one of the 'back' cases is added it provides a different feel to the device, while some of the cases provide the feeling of additional grip.
The Z, which will be the most available version of the phone, will come with Android's Marshmallow, a Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB RAM and 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, with additional support for 2TB of microSD storage. Whereas the more advanced model has the same specification but a bigger battery: a 3500 mAh, rather than 2600 mAh.
The other big difference between the phones, which is said to account for the 1mm difference in size, is the addition of the shatterproof glass on the Z Force. Motorola said this is "guaranteeing the display won’t crack or shatter" when dropped. One test drop of the phone onto a tabletop surface didn't cause the screen to break.
Overall both phones appear to be reliable and function well in demos. The mods easily connect to the phone and work each time they are connected.
But the measure of success for these phones will be whether Motorola's customers are willing to spend money to add extra features to their phones. De Lencquesaing believes the phones can compete with offerings from Apple and Samsung, what can't be denied is that the Moto phones offer something different to their competitors.
"Everybody has a phone, the phone is here to say," De Lencquesaing saud. "Nobody wants to compromise with their phone. The challenge we had to make this work is to make this device super thin and not make any compromise on anything else."
But the rise in sound bars and external Bluetooth speakers has allowed leisure products to easily be carried around and consumed. Both the Moto Z and Moto Z Force has a huge challenge to disrupt this.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
