- Sep 4, 2013
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To be honest, I'm pretty mixed on this one. There were a lot of things I liked but also some things I didn't like that were pretty significant to me.
First, let's start off with the good. The overall hardware is pretty much your typical flagship Android smartphone. A Snapdragon 820 SoC, 4GB of memory and 32GB of storage that's expandable via microSD. Pretty high-end across the board. I also liked how they returned to AMOLED this time around, which is great, especially for stuff like Moto Display, of which an OLED panel makes sense for anyway. Super-quick charging on the Z Force is a nice bonus along with the improved cameras (I'm still not sure if Moto has sorted out their processing, but the addition of OIS and the release of a heavily-improved camera app should help things out). Software is basically close-to-stock Android with some extras like the aforementioned Moto Display, which I liked since the OG Moto X from 2013. And finally, even though I'm still not big on the whole modular design on smartphones unless a universal standard that is adopted by more major smartphone OEMs becomes a thing, Motomods is much better implemented than LG's "Friends" IMO, since it doesn't require a battery pull (and subsequent power off), can be hot swapped as a result, is easier to snap on and remove and has more modules at launch, which are infinitely more useful than the ones LG has, with more to come. Also, a Type-C charging port is a nice touch (though I'm not sure if it is fully-compliant. Probably not, due to quick-charging, but if it's anything like LG's implementation, USB Power Delivery and the other nifty features of USB-C should still be there).
However, there's a couple of downsides that just don't bode well with me, personally. First of all, the design is a bit....ehh. I mean, the phone overall doesn't look bad or anything, but some parts look somewhat...off to me. The flat-tire design on the camera module looks weird to me and the squared FPS on the front is also kinda odd-looking (not helping is that the visible IR sensors on the white model makes it look somewhat goofy to me). The lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack is also a disappointment for someone like me since I use it very frequently, and while Moto is smart to offer an adapter in the box to lessen the pain significantly, I can't help but feel that it's not going to go well with quite a number of folks. And of course, the battery on the standard Moto Z. I'm sorry, but 2,600mAh on a phone with flagship hardware and a QHD display is borderline unacceptable at this stage. Haven't we learned from the Galaxy S6? Given that the Moto Z Force has a much larger 3,500mAh battery in a similar (albeit slightly thicker) profile, I can't help but wonder why they didn't go with something closer to 3000mAh in the standard model. Also, this is more of a personal thing, but I think it's just too thin. I know, I know. They have to make it thin to make sure the Motomods don't add extra bulk or anything, but surely, even an extra 0.5mm couldn't hurt?
Overall, I'm rather mixed on this device. It was actually better than what I thought it would be, but my expectations weren't really high to begin with. It delivers a lot on what I expected and it does a lot of things pretty well, especially when it comes to the basic Android experience. However, some things, like the pretty disappointing battery capacity on the standard model, and lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, just doesn't really do favors for the device for me. I'm also not too sure on how Moto will support this device in the future via security patches and software updates, since they have gotten pretty slow since the Lenovo takeover. Perhaps the one thing that I think really blows it for the device is availability. Throughout the summer, it's exclusive to Verizon, and an unlocked version will come in the fall. On it's own, that might not sound too bad, but when you consider that other phones, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 6/7, the iPhone 7 and the 2016 Nexus devices, usually come out in that timeframe (the Note may come sooner), then it doesn't look too rosy. However, I do hope that Moto does shift through a good amount of these phones, since we need competition in the Android space, and for all the flak the Moto Z has been getting, it at least does a lot of things right, especially the Motomods, surprisingly enough.
On a side note, anyone noticed the "Moto" logo above the front-facing fingerprint sensor? Doesn't it remind you of the HTC black bar on the HTC One M7 to the A9?
First, let's start off with the good. The overall hardware is pretty much your typical flagship Android smartphone. A Snapdragon 820 SoC, 4GB of memory and 32GB of storage that's expandable via microSD. Pretty high-end across the board. I also liked how they returned to AMOLED this time around, which is great, especially for stuff like Moto Display, of which an OLED panel makes sense for anyway. Super-quick charging on the Z Force is a nice bonus along with the improved cameras (I'm still not sure if Moto has sorted out their processing, but the addition of OIS and the release of a heavily-improved camera app should help things out). Software is basically close-to-stock Android with some extras like the aforementioned Moto Display, which I liked since the OG Moto X from 2013. And finally, even though I'm still not big on the whole modular design on smartphones unless a universal standard that is adopted by more major smartphone OEMs becomes a thing, Motomods is much better implemented than LG's "Friends" IMO, since it doesn't require a battery pull (and subsequent power off), can be hot swapped as a result, is easier to snap on and remove and has more modules at launch, which are infinitely more useful than the ones LG has, with more to come. Also, a Type-C charging port is a nice touch (though I'm not sure if it is fully-compliant. Probably not, due to quick-charging, but if it's anything like LG's implementation, USB Power Delivery and the other nifty features of USB-C should still be there).
However, there's a couple of downsides that just don't bode well with me, personally. First of all, the design is a bit....ehh. I mean, the phone overall doesn't look bad or anything, but some parts look somewhat...off to me. The flat-tire design on the camera module looks weird to me and the squared FPS on the front is also kinda odd-looking (not helping is that the visible IR sensors on the white model makes it look somewhat goofy to me). The lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack is also a disappointment for someone like me since I use it very frequently, and while Moto is smart to offer an adapter in the box to lessen the pain significantly, I can't help but feel that it's not going to go well with quite a number of folks. And of course, the battery on the standard Moto Z. I'm sorry, but 2,600mAh on a phone with flagship hardware and a QHD display is borderline unacceptable at this stage. Haven't we learned from the Galaxy S6? Given that the Moto Z Force has a much larger 3,500mAh battery in a similar (albeit slightly thicker) profile, I can't help but wonder why they didn't go with something closer to 3000mAh in the standard model. Also, this is more of a personal thing, but I think it's just too thin. I know, I know. They have to make it thin to make sure the Motomods don't add extra bulk or anything, but surely, even an extra 0.5mm couldn't hurt?
Overall, I'm rather mixed on this device. It was actually better than what I thought it would be, but my expectations weren't really high to begin with. It delivers a lot on what I expected and it does a lot of things pretty well, especially when it comes to the basic Android experience. However, some things, like the pretty disappointing battery capacity on the standard model, and lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, just doesn't really do favors for the device for me. I'm also not too sure on how Moto will support this device in the future via security patches and software updates, since they have gotten pretty slow since the Lenovo takeover. Perhaps the one thing that I think really blows it for the device is availability. Throughout the summer, it's exclusive to Verizon, and an unlocked version will come in the fall. On it's own, that might not sound too bad, but when you consider that other phones, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 6/7, the iPhone 7 and the 2016 Nexus devices, usually come out in that timeframe (the Note may come sooner), then it doesn't look too rosy. However, I do hope that Moto does shift through a good amount of these phones, since we need competition in the Android space, and for all the flak the Moto Z has been getting, it at least does a lot of things right, especially the Motomods, surprisingly enough.
On a side note, anyone noticed the "Moto" logo above the front-facing fingerprint sensor? Doesn't it remind you of the HTC black bar on the HTC One M7 to the A9?
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