Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Moto Z/Force Review!”.
Hey what is up guys, I’m Kip EHD here and the moto Z came out a few days ago. We had the Moto X before and I don’t know what Moto Y is, but I think the gap is actually appropriate because Moto Z is a totally different phone than anything we’ve seen from Motorola or Lenovo in the past, and I like a lot of it. So here’s what’s up moto Z is a high-end flagship, speck, Android phone and it’s actually two phones, there’s the Moto Z and the Moto Z force. So moto Z is the thinner prettier version of the flagship. Five point: two millimeters thin 2600 milliamp hour battery gorilla glass on the front and the back and a 13 megapixel camera and Moto Z force is a slightly thicker version.
So it’s two millimeters thicker and it gets a shatterproof display, a 3,500 milliamp hour battery and a 21 megapixel camera. So right off the bat. The Moto Z force is a bit more expensive, but it’s probably worth it. Unfortunately, these are also both exclusive to Verizon. Right now, the unlocked versions are coming later.
I hate carrier, exclusives. I’Ve talked about that in the past. But what can you do? That’S just the way it is with these. So my favorite thing about this phone is actually the build quality, all metal and glass, no chassis flex or any creaking of any kind tight tolerances materially. This could be one of the best moto phones ever built and obviously they’ve built a lot of good phones and also do you think it looks pretty good in black and that’s just my opinion, but obviously that’s pretty subjective. But there’s no arguing that this guy is well built and, as a result, it feels great to hold and carry it’s really solid.
There’S a microSD card slot up top for expandable storage, which is awesome and a single USB type-c port at the bottom, which is an interesting choice, but maybe a bit premature. I don’t think this is a phone where you have to get rid of the headphone jack, but they did anyway using the phone I slowly got used to it, thanks to just attaching a USB C to headphone jack adapter to my headphones all the time it comes In the box – and I also use Bluetooth audio a bit more but yeah, of course, I still miss that headphone jack a lot. The buttons on the phone are clicky and everything, but they’re a bit of a stretch with the volume buttons all the way at the top corner.
I mean I have big hands so even for me, it’s a stretch which means, if you have smaller hands. It’S probably a bit of a pain to reach them. The other side of the phone is blank, so they could have put the volume buttons over there on the left or put them below the power buttons.
Like most other phones. But I’d say. Maybe the worst thing about this phone is that it’s a pretty constant fingerprint magnet and it definitely doesn’t look good with fingerprints.
So if you hate them as much as I do, you can either grab a D brand skin for it, which leaves the pins at the bottom exposed and wipes out the fingerprints completely, which is great I’ll link it below or you can grab a color swap piece From Motorola they’re a little more expensive but they’re weightier to put on and take off and I’ll talk about them more in a second in this article. So aside from the frustrating buttons – and I guess maybe the lack of water resistance, moto Z is built great on the front – you have a fingerprint reader in this square that kind of doesn’t match with the rest of the aesthetics on the front of the phone. But it’s fast and it works well, so I’m not complaining that it’s there and you can long press to read your finger and wake up and then, while it’s on you can long press again to sleep, it’s not actually a home button, no matter how many times You accidentally try and the screen we’re looking at on the front is a 5.5 inch, quad HD AMOLED display again very good, really high pixel density. Obviously, and viewing angles are more than good enough. Pretty wide and colors stay accurate, it doesn’t get quite as bright as Samsung’s panels, but most don’t it’s not the easiest to see outdoors but other than that. The display on moto Z, looks pretty good and the software itself is Android 6.0 marshmallow right now with Moto’s.
Very light customizations on top, and a lot of this is at least familiar to what we’ve seen in other moto phones, even if the outside the package it comes in is way different. So you have, you know your screen off gestures, your chop-chop to turn the flashlight on and off, and the almost invaluable twisting twice to open the camera. For example, those things aren’t going anywhere. You almost get used to them and miss them on other phones and then the inside the UI itself is still feeling a lot like stock Android. In the way it looks and feels which is great.
I’M a fan of the clean look and I like what they did to use a lot of googles apps as their stock apps. This is something HTC did earlier, so even in the past there would be phones that would look and feel like kind of close to stock Android, but they use their own separate calculator and dialer and photos apps, and all these things that Google already makes so now With this phone you take a picture and you swipe over and you’re in Google Photos right away. The one and only calculator app is the Google calculator, the one and only calendar app.
Is the Google calendar now obviously not everyone’s gon na notice or even care? But I think that’s a really nice touch and it kind of gets nullified by the fact that it’s a Verizon phone so now there’s also a bunch of Verizon bloatware in there. But you know it’s the thought that counts. So, aside from the Verizon bloatware, I’m a fan of the software experience, which means I’ll, probably be really happy with the unlocked version later this year. I’M disappointed that Motorola isn’t fully committing to the regular Google security updates like on time for Android, but I still think it’ll get upgraded to new versions of Android faster than most phones and performances. You can probably already tell has been smooth with my time with this device, as you would expect, with a high-end device with top-notch specs animations are quick. Opening and closing, and switching between apps is quick. It’S snappy! I got pretty warm actually to the touch after using it for a while, or especially after a long session of either web browsing or gaming, not to the point of any performance issues, but still something to notice.
Now the camera on the back of this phone is another weird point for the Moto Z. First of all, I can say that cameras and smartphones has never really been a strong point for Motorola. It’S just true. They’Ve never really had the top of the game. Smartphone cameras and sadly, that’s still true with this camera.
So here’s the deal I did most of my testing with the Moto Z force so 21, a megapixel camera, F, 1.8 aperture optical image, stabilization, dual LED flash and for the most part the pictures looked pretty decent, especially in good lighting. It tends to overexpose a little bit which leads to more blow and highlights than lost shadows, but that’s not a huge problem. There’S definitely a lot more noticeable processing, though first of all, you get a lot of sharpening going on and there’s also plenty of noise reduction, and when you combine that you get some pretty soft or grainy night, shots depends on what you’re taking a picture of which, In this kind of an area, the camera falls apart, pretty quick. It is not good at night or in low-light, but look that’s not like it’s not capable of taking great photos. Most high-end smartphone cam are capable of taking great photos, but when I say it’s hit or miss that just means it’s a little bit more miss than you would like it to be in your daily phone, but it can definitely hit if you get it in the Right conditions, also, if you’re just selfies the front-facing camera, is pretty decent, it’s a wide angle. It exposes well, and it has a front-facing LED flash, which you don’t see every day. The actual camera bump on the back of this phone was pretty interesting, though, because with the thicker phone you would think they would get rid of the camera hump, but they didn’t the thicker moto Z force has the exact same camera hump, and that’s because it’s probably The first phone to ever have a camera hump with a purpose. It has a function to it.
It’S for keeping moto mods in place, so moto mods our Motorola’s answer to the wave of modular smartphones we’ve seen in the past year, so those pins you saw at the bottom of the phone. That’S a combination of magnets and smart connectors that let the phone connect to a range of accessories like the color swap back. I told you about earlier and wrapping around the camera bump helps it hold in place super well now I don’t even know if I’d call this stuff modular, because you’re not really swapping anything or taking anything off the phone, but I’d more just call moto mods modification, Because it’s easily the quickest and easiest way to just add functionality to a smart phone just by clicking it into place, you don’t have to reboot the phone. You don’t have to swap things in and out, there’s no buttons, there’s no clicking! There’S no rebooting! It’S just snap it into place in two seconds and it’s secure and it fits and it works.
So here are the mods we have now number one is the color swap backs? They just get rid of the camera bump and changes a color / material of the back of the phone, the battery backs. These are a little bit thicker and they snap on and they just immediately start charging the phone. The JBL speaker, which gets super loud way louder than the phone’s single front facing speaker and also has a large battery extension and even a little kickstand and the projector, which has a built in battery for power and can project whatever is on your smart phone screen Onto a wall or any projectable surface, so motor mods are actually pretty awesome as they are now and we can cross our fingers for more to come since Motorola promises to try to make them work with future Motorola phones as well. Only problem is they’re a little bit expensive and it’s hard to buy into these with a promise of an ecosystem, especially your next phone might just come from Samsung or Apple or anyone else really.
But I stand by that. This is the best execution of a smartphone mod that I have ever seen. Also, here’s a million dollar idea, a moto mod with a high quality DAC and a headphone jack at the bottom and like a little battery in there. That would be awesome. You’Re welcome I’ll. Take 10 % my favorite mod though besides probably the color swap one, is definitely the battery, because the battery life of the existing moto, Z and Z force is really super average. Obviously, the Moto Z has a 2600 milliamp hour battery. That can only take you so far with a big bright, quad HD display, I’m not surprised. I was only getting two and a half hours of screen on time and having to charge every single day. Didn’T shock me at all.
Moto Z force has a thirty five hundred million power battery and again I’m getting like three hours and change of screen on time, which for me, is still charging every night when I’m using the phone with match brightness all day. But it’s definitely like the battery mod is the easiest way to just click it on it’s better than a battery case, because you don’t have to like attach it around the phone when you attach it to the phone, it starts charging immediately. That’S pretty awesome! So, at the end of the day, moto Z is a great idea with great execution, but it’s just not a complete package like especially if you’re looking for a phone with a great battery life or a great camera thing. You’Re not gon na find it here, and you probably won’t buy this phone for that, but a lot of what they tried is awesome, I’m glad they did it.
Thank you, Lenovo / moto, for trying this and making moto mods work so well, and I do hope it works really well, and I do hope there are more third-party moto mods from other companies that just want to get in on this on the ground floor, because Generation one it’s pretty damn good, so that’s been it! Thank you for watching I’ll talk to you guys, the next one peace .