Motorola has announced the winners of its Mod the Future hackathon event which was held in New York City over the Dec. 10-11 weekend. This is a contest where developers can put forward their ideas on what would make a good Moto Mod for the Moto Z line of smartphones. Motorola notes that there were 17 projects submitted and of those 17, three have now been announced as the winning concepts by a group of judges.
The first of the winners to be accredited in the Motorola blog is “Advanced Audio”. As the name suggests, this one looks to add better audio functionality to your smartphone and especially for musicians and audiophiles, as this Mod will look to include more varying degrees of input and output connections. The second noted Moto Mod is “Sidepad” and again, as the name suggests, this one places much of its focus on gaming. In fact, Sidepad will look to offer smartphone owners a “full-featured gamepad” which comes equipped with actual buttons and does not require the user to rely on the touchscreen controls. While the last of the winners is a Moto Mod which has been dubbed “Bella”. In some respects, this one could have the farthest reaching implications as it is designed with the health sector in mind. Bella essentially is a Moto Mod which collect real-time data from your skin and surrounding environment and could be used for monitoring UV levels, air quality, as well as offering beauty and skincare recommendations.
It is worth pointing out that these winners are only the winners of this round. The hackathon heads to San Francisco next on the Jan. 21-22 weekend, where a bunch of new developers will submit their ideas for a unique and novel Moto Mod. Following which, Motorola notes that the grand prize winners from each grouping will receive various prizes including a meeting at Motorola’s headquarters with a view to seeing if their idea can be brought to market.
Which does suggest that while the modular scene has proved somewhat controversial during 2016, Motorola is looking to maintain a level of modularity with its smartphones going forward, which is in line with the recent reports that have been coming through. Likewise and following this announcement it does seem plausible that Motorola will look to the developer community as a means to identify more unique and presumably, more appealing modules.