Moto Z 810

It's rare to see a smartphone without something attached to it. Protective cases, headphones, zoom lenses, and more brought in manufacturers an estimated $80 billion last year. But many of those accessories are lacking in design and features. Even Apple sometimes falls short: its Smart Battery Case, for instance, makes your iPhone look vaguely like a silicone camel.

Motorola wants change all that. With its new smartphone line, the Moto Z, the company hopes to bring accessories into the design spotlight. The Moto Z is a snazzy-looking smartphone in its own right, and I'll take a closer look at it in a moment, but its main innovation, the "Moto Mod," isn't even part of the phone.

Moto Mods are accessories like power banks, projectors, and vanity cases. They attach to the Moto Z and its ruggedized cousin, the Moto Z Force, via pogo-style connectors on the back of the handset. They add a bit of bulk to the phone, but the ones I tried out at Lenovo's Tech World Expo in San Francisco this week didn't detract at all from the Moto Z's sleek form factor.

Moto Z Pogo

Lenovo, which now owns Motorola, has used pogo connectors before in the ThinkPad Stack line of business travel accessories. They're a combination of very strong magnets and tiny round dots that establish a single power and data connection between the circuits on the Mod and the phone—no USB cords necessary.

When you attach a Mod to the Moto Z, the phone vibrates and you typically get some sort of notification on the screen. That ranges from a full-screen alert for the power pack, to the subtle appearance of an extra battery percentage icon to tell you how much life remains in the built-in battery of the JBL SoundBoost.

Moto Z JBL

The SoundBoost is perhaps the most impressive of the three initial Mods that Motorola had on display at Tech World. It's a 6-watt stereo speaker that's less than an inch thick, and though it can't replicate the highs and lows of a portable speaker like the Bose SoundLink, it is loud. Loud enough that I could hear it from the back of the crowded auditorium of the Expo and in the cacophonous demo room, where multiple competing SoundBoosts were strutting their stuff.

Like the other Mods, it includes a USB-C port to charge its built-in, 10-hour battery, though it will charge automatically when it's connected to a plugged-in Moto Z. The speaker also looks good—it's less than an inch thick with a subtle curve on either end, and a slim red kickstand that folds out from the middle to prop up your phone. But perhaps its best feature is one it lacks: no cumbersome Bluetooth pairing. Once the magnets connect, you're set to rock out.

Moto Z Projector

The Mod projector mirrors the good looks of the SoundBoost, and also comes with a built-in battery and kickstand. But like most mobile projectors, its bulb is weak in all but a darkened room, making it impractical for the sort of impromptu family photo or quarterly sales slideshows for which it's designed.

The most stylish of the Mods is actually the one you'd least expect: the power bank. That's because Lenovo has partnered with Kate Spade New York, Incipio, and Tumi, which slapped their logos on otherwise identical power banks. Once connected, they offer up to 22 hours of battery life.

Moto Z Power Bank

The power bank, projector, and speaker were developed by Lenovo in partnership with JBL and the designers. They're "concepts to help seed the market," said Lenovo's Chief Technology Officer Peter Hortensius. With its Mod Development Kit, the company envisions a sea of third-party Mods that will be compatible with any pogo-equipped Motorola phone.

As for the phones themselves, the Moto Z and Moto Z Force are standard Motorola fare: stylish and powerful. The 5.2mm Moto Z is made from aluminum and stainless steel, and has a water-repellant coating. (Though judging from the amount of fingerprints on the Tech World demo units, its oleophobic properties aren't so great).

Moto Z Side by Side

On the inside, it has a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with optical image stabilization, a 5-megapixel front-facing shooter, and a 2600 mAh battery that can be recharged to deliver eight hours of power in 15 minutes. It runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and includes 32GB of storage. There's also USB-C and microSD (up to 2TB) support and a fingerprint reader.

The Z Force is slightly thicker and includes a higher-resolution camera and longer-lasting battery, though is otherwise identical to the base Z model. If you don't have a Mod power bank, you'll appreciate its ability to get what Motorola claims is 15 hours of battery life from a 15-minute charge.

The Moto Z and its accompanying Mods are certainly innovative, but whether or not they ignite a smartphone revolution will depend to a large degree on their price tags, which haven't been announced yet. It's the same conundrum that plagues prospective ThinkPad Stack owners: sure, you could spend a lot of money to get accessories that are beautifully integrated with each other, or you could pick up a $50 speaker case and power bank online.

Either way, Motorola seems to have tapped into a truism of smartphone users: some may need a 20-hour battery life, and others might crave JBL speakers. None of them can reasonably expect their phones to come with those features built-in, though, and some of them might be willing to pay extra for the privilege of having them in an easy-to-use accessory that doesn't make their phone look like a silicone camel.

Droid versions of the Moto Z will be a Verizon exclusive this summer; pre-orders begin next month. An unlocked Moto Z will go on sale in the fall.

At Thursday's event, meanwhile, Lenovo also introduced the first Google Project Tango phone, the Phab2 Pro. Check out PCMag's hands on the video below.