Motorola’s new Moto Mod brings a full QWERTY keyboard to the Moto Z family

After launching a slew of new Moto Mods last year, the Motorola has kicked off 2018 with two new Mods – the Livermorium Slider Keyboard Mod which adds a full physical QWERTY keyboard to any Moto Z smartphone and the Lenovo Vital Mod which tracks your heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure and more.
Motorola’s Moto Mods are a clever take on the modular smartphone concept. Compatible with Motorola’s Z series of devices, they simply snap onto the back of any Moto Z smartphone and add new functionality. Even though the reception to Moto Mods has been lukewarm at best, Motorola is not close to giving up on the concept. The company recently launched three new Moto Mods in India along with a service to rent them at 399 rupees a week.
The Livermorium Slider Keyboard Moto Mod is the most exciting of the two new Moto Mods. The Mod started life as an Indiegogo campaign last year and is expected to ship within the next month or two for a price of 99 dollars.
The Mod won Motorola and Indiegogo’s ‘Transform the Smartphone Challenge’ after which Motorola pushed it through their Accelerator program and helped Livermorium bring it to life. The Mod basically adds a physical five-row QWERTY keyboard to any Moto Z series smartphone. It tilts the screen at a 60-degree angle and is backlit to boot.
Along with the Slider Keyboard, Motorola also showcased a health based Mod called the Lenovo Vital Moto Mod. At 395 dollars, it costs almost as much as a brand new Moto Z2 Play and is capable of tracking five ‘vital’ health metrics – heart rate, diastolic blood pressure, Pulse Ox, body temperature and respiratory rate. The Lenovo Vital Moto Mod is set to go on sale in the U.S. in April. It is not known at the moment when (or whether) any of the two new Mods will launch in India.