Motorola Moto Z Smartphone Family Gains An Amazon Alexa Smart Speaker Moto Mod

by Brandon Hill — Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 12:05 PM EDT

Motorola has made modular smartphones "hip" thanks to its Moto Z family. The original Moto Z, along with its Moto Z2 Force successor, supports Motorola's Moto Mods systems, which allows you to attach various accessories to the back of your smartphone ranging from speakers to cameras to battery extenders. Today Motorola has announced a new addition: the Moto Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa.

Rather than integrating Amazon Alexa directly into the smartphone hardware and the Android operating system, the Moto Smart Speaker is its own self-contained device. Think of it as a miniature Amazon Echo that you can carry around with you all the time. It contains four far-field microphones so that it pickup your voice from across the room, and has an integrated 1530 mAh battery that can last for up to 15 hours.

As expected, the Moto Smart Speaker give you full integration with the Alexa ecosystem, allowing you to control smart devices, inquire about weather or traffic information, hail an Uber ride, or even check out your upcoming schedule.

This is all admirable functionality, but when we have to pause when it comes to the price tag. The Moto Smart Speaker is priced at $150, whereas the JBL SoundBoost 2 Moto Mod is priced at $79.99. At $150, you could purchase three Echo Dots and scatter them throughout your house.

And if it's smart home integration that you're looking for, the Amazon shopping app for Android will allow you to control all of you connected devices without the need to purchase a hardware add-on. So, this might be a hard sell for Moto Z users, especially if they already have the JBL speaker Moto Mod and at least one Echo device laying around.

Motorola says that the Moto Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa will be available in November.

Tags: Motorola, Amazon, alexa, echo dot, moto z, moto mods

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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