Gadgetory

moto is back with a brand new line of devices that goes from X skips Y and jump straight to Z now lenovo is also plainly seen on the boxes for these phones but that's where a lot of the changes only starts is this the new evolution for at least moto but also perhaps for smartphone technology itself well it's time to find out because it's Joshua Vergara from Android authority what's going on everybody and we have here the Moto Z and the Moto Z force now we are dealing with two different devices here and the Moto G Force is the heftier and somewhat more capable smartphone but the gap between these two is actually not all that significant so where applicable I will mention what the differences are between these two but for the most parts in this review I will be focusing on the heftier Moto Z force now as I already mentioned the Moto G Force is the larger of the two devices with a couple more millimeters of thickness and a significant increase in heft now while it does pack a little bit more in its body as a result credit still has to go to moto for creating the Moto Z which is one of the thinnest and certainly one of the lightest devices out there when compared to other phones with 5.5 inch screens a textured power button makes it easy to access and is low enough on the device to make it easy for a thumb to reach though the flatter Moto Z is smoother on all sides the extra heft adds a chamfer to the force and you may notice by looking at all of the sides that there's only one port on the phone now a USB type-c connector that sits alone without a headphone jack overall there's something really lenovo liked about these phones and that doesn't come with as much of a surprise but it is definitely noticeable you have an eye-catching all-metal design here but it is also very fingerprint prone just as much as it is very shiny and also that camera optic package at the top really sticks out a lot again it's eye-catching but not necessarily ideal thankfully there is a remedy included in the box and that will be our first introduction into the Moto Maude's found at the top and bottom of the devices are magnets along with a bunch of connectors and that's where the Moto mods will do their magic but for now we have the Moto covers dark wooden covers were included with both of our devices and plenty more will be made available for further customization but at the very least these covers already cover up the connectors all of the fingerprints and makes the camera optic package flush with the body now I wouldn't be surprised if anyone put these covers on their phones and thought that's more like it indeed it does feel like the covers need to be on these devices and as you can see you have two different looking phones here because those covers really add a different look to them so we're excited to see what the new covers will look like for further customization but from there you have a pretty hefty device in the Moto Z force and when you put that cover on it ads like 30 grams more to the weight but there's something to be said about having a thicker device not only do you get a larger battery which is the case here but when you have a phone that is this thick and also this heavy it also feels much more secure on the hand now reaching from side to side is not all that difficult with these phones but because of a pretty large bezel on the bottom and on the top of the device you are going to have a little bit of trouble reaching up and down on these phones both of these phones come with 5.5 inch AMOLED displays coming in a quad HD resolution with 535 pixels per inch now that means that collars look pretty good on here as is expected from AMOLED but if they are punched out just a little bit too much you can always tone them down in the settings text is also quite sharp with that high pixel density but everything from media consumption to reading websites and even reading text has been very enjoyable on here and we had a great time gaming with games like Pokemon go and Final Fantasy 7 it is nice to have the moto display returning here and it does benefit from the AMOLED screens now the Moto z-force does come with a bit of a advantage here with the shatter shield display now those are a bunch of layers that are on top of the already existing display which will keep it from shattering or cracking if you happen to drop the phone from typical Heights onto typical surfaces but of course this is not a ruggedized phone even if it does have some water resistance and of course even if your screen doesn't crack there are other parts of your phone that might not fare all that well now performance is where you would expect it to be with the Snapdragon 820 and the audrina 530 and 4 gigabytes of RAM pretty much powering all of the experiences you have in the Moto version of Android now some credit can be given to the Moto version of Android because it is a lot more like stock Android than plenty other OEM skins but even then it's still quite snappy very smooth and multitasking is still able to go along without any issues and all of that is still considering all of the red icons you can see in the app drawer designating all of Verizon's bloatware put on these devices now that said it is a bummer that these funds are only available on one carrier but at least on that carrier you're getting one of the best networks out there onboard storage can be either 32 or 64 gigabytes in capacity but a micro SD card slot is available to make sure you never run out of space now the fingerprint reader found below the display is a wonderful former it's easy to set up and it actually responds in pretty much no time it's an easy way of waking up and unlocking the device simultaneously and there's actually an extra function programmed into it by holding on to that fingerprint reader from pretty much any screen inside of the Android interface you can actually lock the device easily that's a really nice touch no pun intended it took us quite a while to stop pressing it like it was a capacitive home button and the reason why we still think that sometimes is because the soft keys slide out of view when you're in full-screen situations there are four microphones strong about the device and all of them help not only with moto voice activations but without bound audio on calls people we call told us that sound was really clear and that makes a lot of sense to us especially since two microphones are found at the bottom of the front of the device the same can't be said however of the speaker that is at the top of the device in that earpiece unfortunately its sound is just not all that loud enough despite being front-facing and there's not a whole lot of body to it either which brings us to a pretty polarizing detail about the new moto line the lack of a headphone jack a lot of people have headphones that they are really wanting to use with these phones and by using an adapter it's just an extra piece of kit that you might end up losing somewhere in your bag or even just in general and even then if you want to listen to music or podcasts or any type of content while charging your phone how exactly are we supposed to do that the Moto z-force has the larger battery at 3,500 milliamp hours which is bigger than that of the Moto Z which has 2600 milliamp hours in its battery however it really means that you're going to have to pick between the two if you really need to be more of a power user and have a longer-lasting battery but thankfully powering up these devices is not all that difficult as both of them come with turbo charging blocks battery life has been for the most part decent I was able to get about three and a half hours on the Moto Z's smaller battery and about four to five hours of screen on time on the Moto G force now this included camera usage some gaming and a lot of usage on YouTube and powering up the devices like I said is already easy because the turbo chargers come in at 15 watts for the Moto Z and 30 watts for the Moto Z force now using the correct chargers for either of these devices I was able to get from zero to 50 percent in about half an hour and even then if you're really hurting for power on the Moto z-force and in this case the Moto Z you can always slap on one of the Moto mods how'd you like that segue now battery is always in demand and thankfully in scipios off-grid power pack is one way that you can get even more on the Moto mod connector essentially it's 2200 milliamp hours in just the case itself adding to what is already found inside of the Moto Z and the Moto Z force respectively that means 4800 for the Moto Z and for the Moto Z force 5700 power from the power pack is drained either regularly to keep the phone as charged as possible or in an efficiency mode that does enough to keep the phone at 80% as long as I can now in terms of screen on time these batteries got me at least an hour to an hour and a half more once slapped onto the phone at single digit percentages when I really needed it the other two moto mods are the instant share projector add-on and also the JBL sound boost speaker now like I already mentioned there will be another video detailing these mods but in a nutshell these are pretty convenient and nice peripherals to have but they pale in comparison to standalone solutions like Bluetooth speakers or pico projectors and even then they are pretty expensive now it's easy to throw the word modularity around but that's not really what the Moto Z and the Moto G force are doing so moving forward we're just going to be calling them mods and you'll notice that we never used the word modularity in this review but if modularity or in this case mods are going to be the future of smartphone devices well we have to give moto a lot of credit for executing them pretty well now the usefulness of these moto mods might still be in question it might still need to prove itself but the most practical of the three thus far is definitely the battery case and that's enough to get us excited for what might be a very colorful future for the Moto mods the cameras are different between these two devices but really only in one main detail the Moto G force has a 21 megapixel camera while the Moto zeef has a 13 megapixel rear facing camera and the front-facing cameras are all 5 megapixels with a front-facing flash as well the apps are pretty simple to use and they don't really get in your way in the viewfinder unless you get into the professional mode where things could get out of hand pretty quickly but that said if you're in the regular video or photo modes you just have to tap onto a subject and it auto focus is pretty quickly and then the actual shutter to file time is really quick now we can talk about the different megapixel counts and in these photos that you're seeing here the Moto Z force does have a little bit more detail when zoomed into the same area of a photo compared to the Moto Z but the good news here is that everything else including the processing is about the same between the two so unless you actually want that extra amount of detail or you want more megapixels in your camera then you can make your pick between the Moto Z and the Moto Z force we start off with self-portraits which include a beautification mode now first for Moto but definitely not a first for lenovo it mainly enhances the clarity and the colors while smoothing out the lines on the face a front-facing flash makes a welcome return it might be a little bit more useful for the vast majority of people out there when you're in a dark situation or you just need to light yourself up onto a very bright background modes on the main cameras include 4k video recording which is always nice and it benefits from the optical image stabilization it also seems that video is somewhat being used in the panorama mode where you can just quickly sweep from one side to the other and it seems like it's recording the video which will then stitch together a full photo now this doesn't mean that stitching can be a little bit tough but the main issue that we had with it is that in low-light situations the slower shutter speed needed to expose the photo properly means that photos in panorama can be pretty blurry HDR can be on auto when shooting in the normal photo mode and it does a pretty good job of enhancing the photo the effect is pretty noticeable in the heightened shadows the higher clarity and definitely the punched up colors especially when used in the right situations HDR can be a very viable tool well overall pictures do look pretty good with accurate colors meaning that the saturation is not really overdone the majority of pictures keep from looking too dull but if you do get a dull photo you just have to pop on that HDR and you'll get a better looking photo probably more pleasing to the eyes the only real places that the moto Z and the Moto Z force suffer are in lower light situations we do notice a little bit of noise reduction happening and even bright photos not a whole lot as the detail is still definitely there but this noise reduction gets worse and worse as the light gets dimmer add to that the fact that you need to have a very steady hand endure situations because the night mode requires the shutter to be open for a long amount of time so if you're not steady you might get a pretty blurry photo overall though the Moto Z line does a good job of being a companion to the photographer on the daily and finally we can take a look at the software in these devices which are marshmallow powered pretty much stock versions of Android you get everything you would expect from a stock version of Android including the app drawer all the different quick settings in the notification drop-down and it looks a lot like what you would expect a nexus would have which is really great because the extras that moto puts into here aren't really in your face but they're definitely there and are definitely useful and those come in the form of the Moto display the Moto actions and the moto voice now the Moto display is something we mentioned before already and it's basically that ambient display that allows you to action upon a number of notifications just by waving your hand over the device moto actions include a few nice gestures you can use including the double chop in order to turn on the flashlight easily and then a twisting motion that opens up the camera there's also a gesture you can use to shrink the display to make it easier to perform on with one hand and finally there's moto voice a great way of customizing your own experience of the Moto Z essentially you just repeat a phrase a number of times and then that is the phrase that will automatically unlock the device and put you into a Google Voice Search now if you remember from the Moto X from before I said X activate but in this case I'm using the phrase zero help me out moto manages to keep the good times rolling in their version of Android that will undoubtedly satisfy Android purists but will also please those who need a little bit more from their operating systems and this is because the moto editions are not only useful but they are generally out of the way the Moto Z and the Moto Z force droids are available only on Verizon for the full prices of 624 and 720 dollars respectively monthly payments using Verizon's financing put the Z at $26 a month and the force at $30 a month there is one undeniable fact if you're on Verizon this is probably the phone to beat despite changes to the overall Moto formula the aspects that made the previous model X devices great are still found here in one way the other in the case of design the Moto X DNA is still found here only it's now just detachable and speaking of detachable adding the moto mods brings versatility and if the mods continue to bring convenient but useful features the packages of the Moto Z and the Moto Z force can be really hard to pass up the new Moto's are still worthy of their flagship designation boasting every feature that a high-end device should have and the user experience that can prove reliable on the daily we do think that the Moto mods need may be just a little bit more time to prove themselves hopefully more moto mods will come out that make us even more excited for them but it's the potential the potential of these moto mods that makes the Moto Z line very exciting because they take what are already pretty great smartphones and they have the potential to take them to a whole new level as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the Moto Z line we do think it's a great line and they do a great job on their own but really the Moto mods are we're putting them over the top we just hope that more useful accessories like this battery mod are going to come in the future the near future even keep it tuned to Android Authority for even more about to the Moto Z line and our coverage coming in the next few weeks there's a lot of exciting stuff happening so keep it tuned here and don't forget to check out our sibling sites via our source sound guys and tab times for even more outside the world of Android and then when you're done with all of that bring it on back to Android or decom and subscribe to our channel if you haven't already because we are your source for all things Android