Motorola wants your ideas for Moto Mods, kicks off Indiegogo challenge

posted by Florin T. / Nov 03, 2016, 1:41 PM

Motorola wants your ideas for Moto Mods, kicks off Indiegogo challenge

Motorola today announced that it's turning to your ideas and Indiegogo in order to create new Moto Mods for its smartphones. Together with Verizon and Lenovo (which, of course, owns Motorola Mobility), the company just kicked off a challenge that asks for inventors - or other interested users - to submit feasible ideas for Moto Mods that don't exist yet. Motorola wants you to "think of the Moto Mods like an app store, but for hardware."

If your idea is selected, you will receive a Moto Mods Development Kit, plus a Moto Z smartphone, so you can actually create a Moto Mod prototype. Idea submissions are open to participants worldwide until January 31, 2017. After that - or before, if you have a Moto Mod prototype - an Indiegogo campaign can be started, and Verizon and Motorola will make sure to promote it. Finalists will have the chance to visit Motorola's headquarters in Chicago, while their Moto Mods could be sold in Verizon stores.

Mind you, you'll need more than just an idea to impress Motorola. You'll also need to have the technical ability to create a Moto Mod prototype. If you're seriously interested in participating in this challenge, you should read all the details, terms and conditions that Motorola and Lenovo have shared on the dedicated Indiegogo page (first source link below).

As you may know, a Moto Mod is a special accessory that snaps onto a Moto Z smartphone to give it extra functionality. At the moment, Motorola is selling only four Moto Mods: Incipio offGRID Power Pack ($59), JBL SoundBoost Speaker ($79.99), Insta-Share Projector ($299.99), and Hasselblad True Zoom camera ($299.99), all developed by the company itself. Could you be the creator of the next Moto Mod(s)? Pitch your ideas to Motorola and find out!

sources: Indiegogo, Motorola

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8 Comments

1. phonearenarocks

Posts: 606; Member since: Mar 26, 2015

Innovation can be endless only when proper thought process is in place...there are quite many that I can think of... Additional RAM, Secondary processor, Additional storage - should be bigger than what a memory card offers...The implementation will get quite tough though...the phone should be able to properly trigger the right input on removal of the Moto Mod and the backing phone should handle the situation gracefully or else it would lead to biggg problems.

posted on Nov 03, 2016, 1:58 PM 0

3. sgodsell

Posts: 7032; Member since: Mar 16, 2013

Additional ram is ludicrous, especially when that requires a high speed and direct access to the processor. Now a secondary processor with its own ram anx storage would be much better. As a matter of fact I believe they already have a raspberry pi mod. Honestly I think Motorola has hit the nail on the head when it comes to mods. This is innovation at its best.

posted on Nov 03, 2016, 5:05 PM 0

2. Bankz

Posts: 2515; Member since: Apr 08, 2016

I thought they said they already sold developement kits when the phone came out about 4 months ago? So, what happened to those ideas? I hope lenovo doesn't abandon the idea so soon tbh and I think moto should probably have released more mods than they have already as if a multi-lillion dollar company can release just 5 Mods, what incentive does a single individual have for creating one? Let alone financing it?

posted on Nov 03, 2016, 3:40 PM 0

4. Landon

Posts: 1242; Member since: May 07, 2015

An e-paper screen.

posted on Nov 03, 2016, 11:13 PM 0

5. ibend

Posts: 6747; Member since: Sep 30, 2014

4 months too late :-/ but it's fine if it will work with Moto Z2, Moto Z3, and so on..

posted on Nov 04, 2016, 2:00 AM 0

6. ebilcake

Posts: 1221; Member since: Jul 16, 2016

How about the phone that doesn't need any mods to start with? That would be nice.

posted on Nov 04, 2016, 4:14 AM 1

7. MrElectrifyer

Posts: 3960; Member since: Oct 21, 2014

I have an idea, shift those mods to USB Type C connection. Until they ditch the proprietary garbage connection, this is merely another Motorola Atrix; great idea, poor execution, barely any impact on the Android ecosystem.