Moto Z Force

I have had my Moto Z Force for a little over a year. I bought it a little before the Pixel was announced and my Moto Droid Turbo was beginning to lose the excellent battery life that it is known for.

I want to preface this with; I have never liked Samsung Devices. My parents and brother have gone through Samsung devices and every time I am on one, I feel dirty. Its not the android that I love, and it is full of features nobody asked for and bloatware in every corner.

Also, historically I have been a huge sucker for things that had the motorola brand on them. Even through the Google and Lenova years, I have stayed a Moto fan, so take this rating with a grain of salt.

The options at the time were basically the Moto X, the Moto Z/Zforce or a Samsung Galaxy. I wasn’t going to spring for the iPhone after so many years a dedicated android fan, so I checked out the Z Force.

The major selling points were the shatterproof screen, the 3.5mAH battery life, and this new thing called moto mods. Moto Mods is a system where there is a set of magnetic connectors on the back of the phone that allow you to plugin various modules that meet that interface to augment the capabilities of the phone.

The mods they were pushing at the time was a Wireless Chargable Battery Pack, a JBL speaker, and a projector. Now my Droid Turbo had the Qi Charging, and I loved that feature and had all of the charging pads already, so I was a little turned off by the fact that only the battery pack could charge that way.

The battery pack is an interesting Add on. It adds about 3mAH to the phone, which puts the combined battery life at 6.5mAH, well over my turbo’s 4.1. Whats more, there are multiple battery modes with the power mod, meaning you can have it keep a percentage of the battery in the mod, or you can fully drain the mod for the phone. This latter mode is useful because I can charge a power pack separate of the phone, and when I get low, swap power packs to keep power to my phone without ever having to charge my phone directly. This is extremely helpful for long trips. Even with the balanced power mode on, I charge both the phone and the powerpack on a Qi charger overnight, and I have gone 2-3 days on a single charge.

I also sprung for the JBL speaker mod. Having a 12” JBL Bandpass in my car, I am also a sucker for JBL things, so I had to. This provides a pretty loud upgrade to the Z Forces already powerful speakers. Its nice because it also comes with its own battery pack and kick stand, so you can plug it into your phone, play music very loud, all while not adding additional power stress to your battery; as opposed to a Bluetooth speaker where you incur data transfer power loss. However it is a bit bulky, and I think I would rather carry around a bluetooth speaker that could work with any device as opposed to one that was just for mine.

A few mods that have come out since are a Car Mount that I will be picking up, a game pad that extends your phone ot have PSP like controls, a full camera with zooming lense, and most recently a Speaker with Integrated Amazon Alexa.

The mods are the best feature of the phone, with all the other standard android flagship phone features being available. I honestly like the 6.5mAH battery life most amongst all of the features.

So wit the new MotoZ^2 line coming out, I will be hardpressed between upgrading to that or switching to a Pixel 2 for Project Fi. Nothing about the Pixel2 makes me want it over a MotoZ^2 yet, but the Project Fi network might be enough to get me to switch over from my expensive Version Unlimited Everything Plan.