We’ve seen a lot of different Moto Mods to date, including a projector and a camera grip, and now there’s another interesting Mod that may be coming soon.
A Keyboard Mod is on Indiegogo as part of Motorola, Lenovo, and Verizon’s Transform the Smartphone Challenge. The contest aims to help developers have the chance to bring their Moto Mod ideas to life, and Liangchen Chen has thought up a Keyboard Mod.
This week, Chen posted some photos of a prototype Keyboard Mod that’ll be shown off to Motorola and Verizon. The Mod features a full QWERTY keyboard, including a number row, arrow keys, and more. It can hold the phone flat or at an angle and also includes features like LCD lighting for the CAPS key, connection lighting, and a battery indicator.
As of the publication of this post, the Keyboard Mod is nearly halfway funded, with $48,889 raised of the $100,000 goal. There are 13 days left in the crowdfunding campaign. Pricing starts at $60 plus shipping for the Super Early Bird tier, and it’s estimated that units will begin shipping in July 2017.
With this Mod installed, the Moto Z is reminiscent of the old DROID phones that were also sold by Motorola and Verizon, or the old HTC Tilt phones.
Smartphones with physical keyboards are very nearly extinct, with BlackBerry phones like the Priv and KEYone being pretty much the only recent smartphones that have physical keyboards. That doesn’t look like it’ll be changing anytime soon, and so this Keyboard Mod could be a nice add-on for folks that still crave a physical smartphone keyboard beneath their thumbs.
Do you want a smartphone with a physical keyboard? If you had a Moto Z, would you buy this Keyboard Mod?