Review: Lenovo’s Moto Z smartphone – pricey add-ons a stumbling block
The latest handset to do away with a headphone jack and go modular, the Moto Z is super thin and fast, but design issues, battery life, camera performance and the high cost of add-ons work against it
Lenovo acquired Motorola Mobility from Google early 2015, and soon released that year’s flagship Moto X and a number of other models offering bang for the buck. The modular Moto Z is the Chinese company’s first really innovative Moto smartphone.
Design and hardware
The Moto Z is super thin, at just 5.2mm. As a result, heat from the processor can be easily felt, though it dissipates quickly. The back of the phone is flat for connectivity or future modular compatibility. The positioning of the power and volume buttons – all evenly spaced on the right side of the phone – is not ideal, as it’s easy to press the wrong one.
The fingerprint sensor on the front bottom of the phone is fast and accurate but it’s overly sensitive, so brushing against it – which happens often – would result in regular and distracting vibration.
Moto Z traded the 3.5mm headphone jack in favour of a USB-C and an adapter dongle that are awkward to use and ugly to look at. Speaking of looks, at first glance the Moto Z is a boring black slab. But it’s possible to pair it with Moto style shells of different colours and in premium materials, a selection of which come with the phone.
