Moto Z & Moto Z Force are official – release date and specs confirmed

Lenovo and Motorola has just announced a string of successors to its flagship Moto X series. Meet the Moto Z family, and its modular set of accessories, the Moto Mods. Taking a leaf out of the LG G5‘s book, the Moto Mods snap onto the back of the Moto Z to give it additional features like enhanced speakers, a miniature projector, and a built-in battery pack.

If that wasn’t enough, the leader of the Z family, simply titled the Moto Z, is now officially the world’s thinnest smartphone, measuring an astounding 5.2mm thick. Made from stainless steel and the same kind of aluminium used in planes, the Moto Z really does look stunning, and it’s packed with the latest hardware, including a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM and comes with either 32GB or 64GB of storage. There’s also a microSD slot for cards up to 2TB.

On the front, you’ve got a 5.5in, 2,560×1,440 AMOLED display as well, so expect top notch image quality once we get one in for testing. Round the back, you’ve got a 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation and laser autofocus. There’s also a wide-angle 5-megapixel selfie camera that has its own front-facing flash.

While not waterproof, it is water repellent, and its fingerprint reader will let you unlock the phone in an instant with a single touch. Motorola’s also claiming 30 hours of battery life with the Moto Z, but that figure comes from mixed usage and standby time, so we’ll have to see how it performs in real terms once we get one in for review. Of course, as with Motorola’s Moto X smartphones, the Moto Z will also support its quick charge TurboPower technology, this time giving you 8 hours of power in just 15 minutes.

Moto Z Force

Joining the Moto Z is the successor to one of my favourite phones of 2015 – the Moto Z Force. Now using a second generation shatterproof display, the screen on the Moto Z Force looks absolutely indestructible, and I look forward to putting through our renowned baseball bat test again.

It has all the same specs as the regular Moto Z, too, but here the battery is much larger, supposedly delivering 40 hours of mixed usage and standby time and producing a whopping 15 hours of power after being TurboPower charged for 15 minutes. The Moto Z Force also has a higher resolution 21-megapixel camera, which also has optical image stabilisation, but adds both phase detect and laser autofocus technologies.

Of course, both phones will be compatible with Motorola’s new Moto Mods. These snap on to the back of each Moto Z using high-powered magnets, allowing you to snap them on and off as you need. Motorola’s also guaranteeing that these Moto Mods will be compatible with future Moto Z phones as well, so you needn’t worry about having to upgrade them next year.

The first module is the JBL SoundBoost, which according to Motorola is “really, really, loud”. Next up is the Moto Insta-Share Projector, allowing you to turn your respective Moto Z into a 70in movie projector. Lastly, there’s the Power Pack, which Motorola claims will add up to 22 hours of battery life to each handset. Swappable Style Shells will also be available to customise the look of your Moto Z, and these will come in wood, leather or patterned fabrics.

Even better, Motorola will be providing its own Moto Mod open architecture to the public, allowing third party manufacturers to get in on the action as well. Through the Moto Mods Developer Program, everyone from small developers to established businesses will be able to build new modules for future use.

Release date

So when can you get your hands on the Moto Z and Moto Z Force? Sadly, we’ll have to wait until September before they arrive in the UK, but we’ll be sure to bring you all the latest information (as well as our final verdicts) as soon as we can.