Motorola held its very first “Mod the Future Hackathon” in New York City the past weekend. The hackathon revolved around developing new and innovative concepts for new Motorola Mods. Developers from 5 countries, namely U.S, Canada, Brazil, Latvia, and Mexico participated in the event projecting their ideas in a quest to win Moto Mod concept for the Moto Z.
Moto mods are modular add-ons introduced by Motorola with its Moto Z series smartphone. These Mods either enhance the functionality of your devices or add some new features to it. These mods are swap on hardware and attach them to your devices. Present mods available in the market include a battery pack Mod — Mophie JuicePack, a car dock Mod for charging your phone, Mod adding camera features etc.
At the event, unique concepts for Moto Mods were witnessed. Some of them include — a video paging Mod, a ‘Smart Cart’ retail shopping Mod and an emergency situation response Mod for consumers. Moreover, Mods pertaining to social welfare and health were also seen like insulin level monitoring concept and a water pollution testing Mod. The winning Mods were announced by Motorola on its official blog, those are-
- “Advanced Audio” Mod – The Mod interfaces with a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to provide audio input and output to the smartphone. The winning concept has been developed by Curtis Mason, Andrew Afflitto, Mark Ayad, Abigail Brown and Yousef Alsayid. These mods will improve the quality of your Moto Z HiDef audio ports by transmitting audio far better than a standard headphone jack.
- “Sidepad” Mod – Developed by Gabriel Ortiz and Aaron Franco, the concept will add gaming controls to your Moto Z and intensify the gaming experience. On winning, Aaron Franco commented “it was totally worth staying up all night.”
- “Bella”, A Skin Care Mod- This Moto Mod is developed with a vision to protect your skin. The Mod will collect real-time data from your skin and surrounding environment using built-in sensors that examine factors such as UV levels, air quality, and if aimed at your face, skin elasticity levels. The concept has been generated by Ally Cheung, Nancy Wan and Sylvee Lee which claim that the Mod is highly beneficial for modern women.
After such a positive response with participation from 53 developers, Motorola has decided to be back with its next Hackathon early next year. The event will be held at San Francisco on January 21-22. The winners would receive cash prizes of $5,000 and a Moto Z and Moto Mods Development Kit per team member same as the New York winners.
Moreover, the winning teams(from both the events) will be invited to Chicago to present the idea to leaders at Motorola’s HQ. And it doesn’t end here, it is quite a possibility that the team secures a funding from Lenovo Capital. Events of this kind will bring great concepts in the market for future alongside promoting Motorola devices.
