Motorola Moto Z Force Droid Edition – Review

Instead of releasing what would be Motorola’s fourth generation Moto X, the innovative wireless device company settled on a slightly different moniker: Moto Z. While the second and third generation Moto X phones offered slight improvements and spec enhancements over their predecessors, the Moto Z family embodies a greater departure not just from the X series but from smartphones in general. Attachments and accessories have been around since the onset of smartphones, but the Moto Z is the world’s first modular smartphone.  The Moto Z family includes the Moto Z, Moto Z Play, Moto Z Play Droid, Moto Z Droid, and the Moto Z Force Droid, the last of which is the focus of this review.

The Moto Z employs a powerful magnet under a set of golden bumps on its rear surface. A variety of attachments, Moto Mods, customize the Z’s features and abilities. Many of these mods simply enhance some of the phone’s existing features: the speaker attachment boosts the volume of the device to an impressive level, while a camera attachment transforms the phone’s onboard  camera into a more capable piece of hardware. Other mods include a 2,200 mAh battery booster and a miniature projector.

The Moto Z With Projector and Camera Mods

In addition to Moto Mods capability, the Moto Z Force Droid Edition also includes a 5.5” shatterproof display (Motorola guarantees that the display won’t break) that is brilliantly bright and large enough to enjoy movies and immersive games. The Moto Z is packed with 4 GB of RAM and a 2.2 GHz Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, giving it snappy performance; it never missed a beat when switching between social media, music, and game apps. The Z comes with a choice of 32 or 64 GB internal storage options, but a micro SD card port supports the addition of up to 2 TB in an instant (although a card of that size is yet to be released).

With a 3,500 mAh internal battery, the Z can operate all day and well into the next. Better yet, the battery can be charged quickly with the included Turbo charger; 15 minutes of charging adds another 15 hours of battery life to the phone. All of this is packed into a slim 7 mm profile.

Motorola also made the switch to USB-C. Finally, we get to see a Moto phone with a fingerprint sensor, and it only takes it 150 milliseconds to recognize the owner. One caveat, due to the nature of Moto Mods, the sensor is located on the front of the device and has no other functionality, therefore taking up valuable space on the front.  iPhone users who just wandered into this discussion beware, the fingerprint button just unlocks the phone, it is not clickable and will not take you “home.”

Click here to continue to Page 2 – Let’s Get Modular

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