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Exclusive: Moto Z2 Force revives the headphone port (new renders and video)

New renders and 360 video show the Moto Z2 Force, aka the Moto Z Force 2017, revives the 3.5 mm headphone port despite being even thinner this year.
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Published onApril 15, 2017

In collaboration with OnLeaks, Android Authority has obtained renders and a 360 degree video of the upcoming Moto Z2 Force, which we first saw leaked in super fuzzy form last week. These images and video confirm what we saw there: a 2017 Moto Z Force that looks very much like last year’s. You can thank Moto Mods for that but fortunately there are still some changes worth noting.

As strange as it sounds to write this, the most important one of all is the reappearance of the 3.5 mm headphone port, which was controversially removed from last year’s Moto Z series. That’ll be great news for anyone that avoided last year’s models because of that fact, but bad news for anyone that bought into the idea of a headphone port-less future for Moto. I just hope you didn’t throw all your wired headphones away.

The second thing to note is that the design is a bit of a mix between last year’s Moto Z and this year’s Moto G5 and G5 Plus. Instead of the “caps” at the top and bottom on the back of the phone, the new Moto Z2 Force features a thin band that flows the entire way around the device, presumably to allow better radio signal access to the four antennas rumored to be inside.

Sprint will apparently use these antennas to bring Cat. 16 download speeds to the Moto Z2 Force. That means two things: the 2017 Moto Z range won’t be a Verizon exclusive and the Moto Z2 Force specs will include the Snapdragon 835. Sprint has already acknowledged it has partnered with Qualcomm and Motorola on its LTE enhancement efforts and demoed its progress on a mystery Moto phone we now know to be the 2017 Moto Z.

As we saw in previous leaks, the Moto Z2 Force features a dual camera setup on the back, more rounded edges, a dual-LED flash on the front, single speaker in the earpiece, redesigned solid-state fingerprint scanner below the display and a textured power button below the volume buttons.

The Moto Z2 Force features a dual camera setup on the back and a redesigned solid state fingerprint scanner.

There’s also apparently going to be a Lenovo logo on the lower part of the right hand side of the phone. That wasn’t included in the renders or video here but you can see its location on the leaked press render from the other day.

As you can see, the pogo pins and camera bump are in their rightful places, allowing you to slap any of the existing Moto Mods on the 2017 Moto Z Force. But the Moto Z2 Force has a slightly larger footprint than its predecessor, measuring 156.32 x 76.36 mm compared to last year’s version which measured 155.9 x 75.8 mm. It will once again have a 5.5-inch display.

Interestingly, this year’s Moto Z2 Force has become even thinner that last year’s model. The Moto Z2 Force is 5.99mm thick (8.50mm with back camera bump) compared to last year’s version which measured 7 mm (so much for last year’s Moto Z being so thin it couldn’t house a 3.5 mm headphone port). Let’s just hope that doesn’t mean we get a battery smaller than 3,500 mAh this year.

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