Some of you may (I hope most of you do) remember the founders of the mobile phone, Motorola from back in the mid 90’s. As the first to market in South Africa the MicroTac was the symbol of success. Sporting around a 4 hour battery life, if you owned one, you most likely carried around a few extended batteries in your pocket that you slid onto the phone to keep you going to get through an entire day.
Motorola continued with iconic designs and innovations, with the StarTac and then the RAZR, the last crown jewel, before Nokia, Apple and Samsung came and stole the crown and led to the demise of the mighty Motorola.
So FFW to 2016, the King is dead! Long live the King! The Motorola brand has been acquired by Lenovo and some exciting times lie ahead. So how does Moto re-enter the market and disrupt the current market royalty? You innovate a little harder, look at what’s being done and improve it. Enter Lenovo Moto Z and its Moto Mods!
When LG launched the G5 and its “companions”, we got a little excited but the downfall with their companions, was you had to power the phone off to add them and they were a little hefty. Moto Z improves on this with its magnetic snap-on “Moto Mods” which can give your phone a meatier battery, turn it into a boombox for your weekend braai, a super “SLR” camera or transform it into a video projector for an impromptu movie night etc etc..
Having only briefly seen the mods, they aren’t all perfect but are definitely a step in the right direction. The mods are collaborations with leaders in their fields. The additional Incipio battery pack (around R999) was great, as well as the JBL speaker (around R1499) pushed out superb sound (check them out here), the Hasselblad True Zoom camera definitely cool but as with the Projector (which didn’t really measure up, unless the room is very dark) at around R5000 a mod will be a pricey mod.
The beauty of the magnetic snap on mods, is they easy to pop on, don’t require you to switch off the phone and the built in intelligence on the magnetic connector port recognise the mod and adapt accordingly.
There are plenty of future mods in the pipeline and you can even build your own, with the ultimate kicker being the Mods will be future proof for at least 3 generations of phone. Which is great knowing that if you purchase a pricey mod, it will be compatible with the next versions of the Moto lineup.
“On the whole, the Moto Z is a reliable and powerful device that can stand up to most of the top-of-the-line phones – and that’s even if you strip away the compelling modular factor. But you wouldn’t do that, would you, because those modules are half the fun.”
Launching later in October in SA, all we can say is GO GO GADGET ARMS 😉
