Motorola’s modular Moto Z has the potential to be VERY good

David Court June 10, 2016

You’ve probably heard of Project Tango before. It’s Google’s codename for modular smartphones that, as the name suggests, can be upgraded piece by piece. Motorola (formerly owned by Google) has just launched its first modular/Tango device, right out of the blue. It’s called the Moto Z… and it has the potential to be very good.

The Moto Z’s specs are very impressive!

Let’s start with the actual smartphone on offer here. We’ve not had any hands-on time with the Moto Z yet, but judging by its specs, it looks like a cracker.

The 136g Moto Z measures in at a slender 153.3 x x75.3 x 5.19mm – Motorola is claiming that these specs make it the “thinnest premium smartphone” ever. The screen is a more-than-decent 5.5in AMOLED display with a 2,560 x 1,440 (534ppi) resolution. There’s a powerful Qualcomm® SnapdragonTM 820 processor paired with a huge amount of RAM (4GB). Storage wise, it comes with either 32GB or 64GB of storage, expandable by up to 2TB via a microSD slot.

Woof!

That’s not all. There’s also a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a wide-angled lens 5-megapixel selfie camera. Finally, it has a fingerprint sensor and an ample 260mAh battery.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-2L1zQkJ8UA

What’s a Moto Mod?

Ok, so that’s the phone out of the box dealt with. Looks good, right? Well, that’s exactly Motorola’s idea. A premium smartphone with the ability to improve it further with something called Motorola is called Moto Mods.

It looks as if there are only three Moto Mods available at the moment. These are a “really, really loud” JBL Soundboost speaker Mod, a 70in projector called the Moto Insta-Share Projector and the Power Pack that adds 22 hours of battery life. No prices have been given for these mods yet.

Moto Z release date and price

What’s interesting with the Moto Mods project is that Motorola wants to “bring your ideas to life”. To achieve this Motorola has launched the Moto Mods Developer Program to help smaller developers. The Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group (Lenovo owns Motorola) has set aside $1m in equity funding for the “individual or company that creates the best Moto Mods prototype by March 31, 2017.”