Amazon’s Alexa is truly taking the world by storm, but since the company’s smartphone ambitions have hit a bit of a brick wall, the dream of using Alexa on the go has fallen well short of reality. That could change soon thanks to a new partnership between Amazon and Motorola. At MWC this week in Barcelona, Motorola announced that its Moto Z handset will be getting an Alexa-enabled Moto Mod speaker, and it already looks pretty awesome.
The peculiar — or perhaps genius — modular accessory design of the Moto Z initially seemed like it might be no more than a gimmick, but the sheer number of high-profile partners Motorola has managed to convince to build Moto Mods is actually quite impressive. Amazon is the latest of these partners, and Motorola says its Alexa speaker add-on will be available later this year.
Here's our first glimpse of the new Alexa #motomod #hellomoto pic.twitter.com/xEsYveP6nP
— PCMagLIVE (@PCMagLive) February 26, 2017
Like the other Mods, the Alexa accessory snaps onto the back of the smartphone, and in this case it actually produces a pretty noticeable hump on the rear. The curved back seemingly allows the phone to rest partially on its side, which could be convenient if you need to look at the screen for a response, or potentially annoying if you’re trying to fit it into your pocket without looking like you’re carrying a brick.
Motorola’s Amazon ambitions don’t stop with an Alexa speaker mod; Alexa functionality is coming to the company’s future smartphones as well, and this time it won’t be an add-on. “Later this year, we’ll add Alexa integration into our phones,” Motorola teased in a blog post announcing the Alexa Mod, “and you won’t have to unlock the phone first.”
