Motorola Moto Z: Prices, specs and release date

Motorola has announced a new range of modular flagship smartphones to do battle with the LG G5, as well as the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and iPhone 6S Plus.

Revealed last week at a set-piece event, the Moto Z and Moto Z Force run Android 6.0.1 and are interesting propositions.

Design

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The first thing you'll notice about the Moto Z is that it's strikingly thin. At a mere 0.2ins across, it's one of the slimmest smartphones in the world and sports smaller proportions than many of its rivals. It weighs just 5oz and is made from aluminium and steel.

The front features a large face with a curved top and bottom, while a metal frame houses buttons running down the sides. The backplate is flat, with a large circular housing for the camera hardware.

In order to make the Moto Z as thin as possible, the company has dropped the headphone jack, so owners have to use the USB-Type C charging port. It's a move strongly rumoured to be echoed on Apple's iPhone 7 when it arrives later this year.

Display

The Moto Z uses a 5.5ins display, tucking it in alongside premium phablet-style devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and iPhone 6S Plus. In terms of tech, it's a quad-HD AMOLED unit, boasting a resolution of 1440x2560 pixels.

Hardware

Specs match up with other Android rivals. The Moto Z gets a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset mated to 4GB RAM and comes with either 32 or 64GB internal storage, although this can be upped through the Micro SD card slot, which can accommodate as much as 2TB of memory. The card slot also doubles as a second SIM tray.

The camera features a main 13-megapixel sensor on the rear, with optical image stabilisation and laser autofocus. The front-facing selfie camera has a five-megapixel unit, with an f/2.2 aperture and 1.4um "big pixels",

Inside, the Moto Z gets a 2,600mAh battery - behind the 3,000mAh cell you'll find packed in the thicker Galaxy S7 Edge – which is rated at 30 hours of mixed use.

Moto Mods

The Moto Mods, the modular element of the phone, differs from the system used on the LG G5. They are a series of backplates, which snap on to the phone via magnets.

So far, there are three to choose from: a projector capable of broadcasting a picture up to 70ins; a powerful speaker module, created in partnership with audio specialists JBL, and finally, a simple battery backplate, available in a number of designs. More official Moto Mods are on the way, as are third-party accessories.

Overall, TechRadar likes what it sees, saying the mods are "more plentiful and creative" than those to be found on the LG phone.

Moto Z Force

The Moto Z Force has one or two tweaks from the standard Moto Z. Firstly, it's harder and so more durable, with ShatterShield tech and a Motorola guarantee that it won't smash or crack if you drop it.

There's a beefier camera on board, too, featuring a 21-megapixel main sensor and also phase detection autofocus.

Although the display size is the same, the Z Force's case is larger. The phone is slightly taller and wider and much thicker at 0.275ins. However, that also means it comes with a larger battery – it gets a 3,500mAh cell.

Release date and price

As PC Advisor notes, rollout will begin this summer in the US, with September currently touted for the UK.

As for the price, Phone Arena says it should come in at a price point slightly lower than the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6S. It's not clear if that means lower than the standard versions or the large, 5.5ins phablets, but it indicates a price around £539. Nothing is official yet, so price estimates should be taken with a grain of salt.