(soft music)
- [Michael] The cool thing about being first
to market with a hot new product
is you get to soak in all that sweet buzz.
Well, in the smartphone world it doesn't get
much more buzz-worthy than 5G
and Motorola has found a way to get there first.
Sorta.
From Motorola's headquarters in Chicago,
I'm Mr. Mobile and this is the world's first 5G phone.
Kinda.
(upbeat music)
Okay, technically Motorola did bring a bunch of us here
to show us a new photo, the Moto Z3 right here,
but to quote Halt and Catch Fire, this isn't the thing.
This is the thing that gets us to the thing.
There's just nothing remarkable about the Moto Z3,
it's basically a Z3 play with a different camera
and a newer processor.
The camera packs the exact same specs
as last year's underwhelming Moto Z2 Force, though,
and the processor isn't the top of the line
Snapdragon 845 but instead last year's 835.
Those compromises get you a phone
that's under 500 bucks but it's also exclusive
to Verizon Wireless.
Now, this is by no means a full review
but folks, you probably don't need me to tell you
that this isn't exactly going to set the world on fire.
For that, you need to get one of these.
This is what Motorola meant when it teased
a whole new way to communicate and for this
I need you to jump ahead with me in time a little bit
to early 2019.
That's when this Model will go on sale
and it's also when Verizon's new 5G network
will presumably be complete enough in launch markets
to deliver the kind of speeds 5G promises.
Now, I was pretty meh on 5G until I attended this event
and I know that's true for a lot of you as well.
I mean, if you live in a city with great 4G coverage,
your phone's probably fast enough already.
And when I first saw the kind of fluffy 5G experience zone
that Motorola built at its headquarters here,
I was still unmoved.
But then I realized that on my flight out here,
I had one of the exact problems that 5G is looking to solve.
I was sitting on the tarmac waiting to fly out,
trying to download a podcast I wanted to listen to
on the air and the overburden 4G network at Boston Logan
just wasn't fast enough to deliver it in time.
A 5G connection could've downloaded 400 podcasts
in the same time period or an entire season
of Star Trek Discovery in a couple minutes.
That's insane.
Delivering those speeds takes some insane equipment as well.
See, the 4G networks that phones use now
mainly use the same cellular bands
phones have been using for years
between 600 megahertz and 2.5 gigahertz.
Your home WiFi connection lives a little higher
in the spectrum between 2.4 and five gigahertz
and the 5G mobile network Verizon is building
is way up at 28 gigahertz.
So, you need special antennas for that.
There are four of these built into the 5G Moto Mod
and a special Modem, Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X50.
Qualcomm told me that as recently as three years ago,
these antennas were thought to be impossible to build.
That's how cutting edge this stuff is.
But, and there's always a but,
while high frequency radio waves are great
for data speed, they're terrible at penetrating buildings
and walls, even a figure can disrupt the signal,
which is part of the reason there are four of these
antennas built into the Mod.
So, the Mod also includes a separate Modem,
the X24 which promises one of the fastest
4G connections you can get.
When you slap the Mod onto the back of the phone,
the Mod's Modems take over for the phones
and all three components, the phone, the Mod,
and the network communicate to deliver
the best data connection you can get
for wherever you happen to be.
Now, all this equipment takes a lot of power
to operate, so the Mod also has its own 2000AM
power battery built in as well.
Yeah, are you starting to see why this thing is so thick?
Motorola says it is working to make this Mod compatible
with other Moto Z phones but only the Verizon branded ones.
(soft music)
Okay, so Motorola brought us out here to impress us
and in my case, yeah, it worked to an extent.
I'm coming away from the announcement
with a new appreciation for the potential of 5G
and it's nice to see a Moto Mod used for something more
impressive than playing music
or printing out some Polaroids.
But it's still weird, right?
I mean, think about it,
by the time this Mod is available,
it's highly likely other smartphone makers
will have phones with 5G baked right in.
While I'm personally excited to test the first 5G networks,
by 2019, I'm not gonna wanna use a Moto Z3 to do it.
So, will Motorola release another Moto Mod compatible phone?
Kinda feels like the sun has set on those.
Will Motorola make a fully integrated 5G phone?
Yeah, maybe.
And what about other carriers beyond Verizon?
All of them are taking their own paths to 5G.
Folks, I always hate to end a video on the lukewarm note
of stay tuned but, I also won't like to you.
It's the best I can do for now.
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And thanks.
From Chicago to Boston to Brooklyn,
next week it's off to New York for Samsung folks,
so make sure you're subscribed to The Mr. Mobile
on YouTube so you don't miss it
and do let me know in the comments
if you do want me to cover the Z3 in a full review.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and stay mobile, my friends.