Motorola introduced its latest flagship phone – the Moto Z – yesterday at Lenovo Tech World and surprised the majority of tech enthusiasts with a new design language. Long story short, the Moto Z is the company’s first commercially-viable modular smartphone, which makes it somewhat of a rare breed. The handset seems to be a response to devices that have borrowed a similar modular philosophy, such as the LG G5, and Motorola appears to have great faith in its new design. In fact, during a recent Q&A session at Lenovo Tech World, Motorola’s senior vice president of engineering and global product design, Iqbal Arshad, revealed that as far as Motorola is concerned, other modular phones have “completely failed”.
During the aforementioned Q&A session, Motorola’s Iqbal Arshad discussed certain aspects regarding the Moto Z’s modular design, and claimed that the Moto Z “is as good a phone as we’ve ever produced”. The senior VP also added that although it may be very easy to label a new flagship as “the best we’ve ever produced”, it’s “really, really, really hard to go with a design like this”. Arshad and his team went on to discuss various challenges they had to face, and how Motorola re-engineered the antenna design and ditched the headphone jack in order to create a modular smartphone that would retain its original aesthetics as much as possible when paired with modules. The company wanted to create a smartphone thin enough so when it’s paired with a module, the whole package still “feels like one phone”. “Everything else out there similar has completely failed”, added Iqbal Arshad, and while he didn’t mention any rival brands of modular smartphones, it does seem like the senior VP may have hinted at LG and their modular LG G5 introduced earlier this year at Mobile World Congress 2016. In his view, the Motorola Moto Z represents a noteworthy departure from modular smartphone designs that can become awkward to hold when paired with certain modules.
For readers who may not be familiar with the Moto Z modules, they come in the form of interchangeable back covers called “Moto Mods”, and they will be available for purchase as accessories. In addition, Motorola confirmed that Moto Mods are forward compatible, meaning that the first generation of modules should be compatible with future Moto Z smartphones.
