Moto Z2 Force: Motorola’s best has matured

Last year, Motorola announced the excellent Moto Z and Z Force. Going from the X-line to the modular Z-line signaled a shift in Motorola’s priorities, focusing on the cool idea of the Moto Mods.

Now, Motorola is doubling down on its modular Z-line with the Moto Z2 Force.

The Moto Z2 Force is more of a refinement than a radical re-thinking of its modularity, in large part due to the similar design. The Z2 Force’s back still features the circular camera in the top center and the magnetic pins at the bottom. This meant Motorola couldn’t completely change the design or function, like including a glass back instead of aluminum. So the familiar design is back with slight improvements and many more Moto Mods.

On the surface, continuing with the modular design seems to be natural for Motorola. The first company to jump into the modularity fad was LG with the G5, but it quickly abandoned the failed experiment a year later with the G6. Motorola is continuing on with the same fervent spirit it had last year. That’s very admirable.

Of course the specs have seen a big bump. The Z2 Force features a 5.5-inch OLED QHD display, Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage with expandability, 2,730mAh battery and Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box. Nothing too surprising there. Motorola also kept the similar front design with big display bezels. This makes room for the 5MP front-facing camera, various other sensors, the earpiece and a well-placed fingerprint scanner—but it is still a very outdated design when put next to the Galaxy S8.

Just like the original Moto Z last year, this year’s Z2 Force ditches the headphone jack.

Where the big improvement comes is with the new dual 12MP camera. Like the iPhone 7 Plus, G6, and OnePlus 5, the Z2 Force jumped on the dual camera bandwagon. What’s notable about the Z2 Force’s camera is one sensor is RGB while the other sensor is monochrome. It also wouldn’t be a noteworthy dual camera if it didn’t add a depth of field effect to the background of stills, just like Apple’s Portrait Mode.

The camera performs takes solid shots. You can see some of the samples taken with it down below.