Recently, Motorola officially announced the latest generation of its flagship lineup. Moving away from the Moto X brand and adopting the Moto Z name, there are two distinct variants, along with those same devices coming in an unlocked option later on down the road. It was an interesting launch, if not all that surprising, because Motorola announced the devices as the Moto Z Droid and Moto Z Force Droid — both handsets exclusives for Verizon Wireless.
The aforementioned unlocked devices, which will be sold without direct ties to a specific carrier, are coming later, and will be sold at full retail price. (Motorola has its own options to avoid dropping a large sum at once, at least.) For many, then, the Moto Z and Moto Z Force simply might not be an option, because they prefer to get their device through their carrier directly.
So, for someone on Sprint, or T-Mobile, who wants to get the new Motorola-branded flagships, that means switching carriers.
To be fair, switching carriers is a lot easier than it used to be. For one, contracts aren’t the norm, which means the only thing keeping you under one carrier’s network versus another is, usually, the monthly agreement you have to pay off the phone you’re using. Once that’s done, either by getting to the end of the monthly agreement or just paying it off ahead of time, you’re on a month-to-month basis and you can leave when you want. Which is great!
And then other carriers are trying to sway new sign-ups all the time, usually in the form of throwing money at potential new customers and helping to pay off those devices so they can make the switch. It is a lot easier to switch carriers these days, but it’s still a pretty solid hassle, so it would make sense if it isn’t the go-to option for many customers.
Plus, great high-end devices are readily available on every carrier these days. While the Moto Z Droid lineup is great, so is the Samsung Galaxy S7, or the HTC 10, or the Apple iPhone 6s. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Switching everything around just to get a high-end phone, when there are so many others to choose from, just doesn’t seem like it would be that important.
Exclusives aren’t going anywhere any time soon, of course, so we’ll see them continue to pop up here and there. AT&T has the rugged Galaxy S7 Active, for instance. So I’m curious: Are any of you switching carriers to get these devices? Or have you in the past? Let me know!
