Motorola has announced the first round of Moto Mod winners from the first Mod the Future Hackathon held in New York City. The event had teams comprised of 53 developers, 18 entrepreneurs, three designers, one surgeon, and a dog — yes a dog — from the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Latvia, and Mexico. The teams had 24 hours to develop a functional Moto Mod concept for the Moto Z smartphone.
After more than 2,400 total man hours, 17 projects were submitted by the deadline. Concepts included a video paging Mod, a ‘Smart Cart’ retail shopping Mod, an emergency situation response Mod, an insulin level monitoring concept, and a water pollution testing Mod. After 45 minutes of judging, the top three Moto Mods concepts were announced. The three winning concepts included a HiDef audio Mod, a gamepad Mod, and a skin care Mod.
“Advanced Audio” – Curtis Mason, Andrew Afflitto, Mark Ayad, Abigail Brown and Yousef Alsayid
Using the USB MDK connection, Modio interfaces with a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to provide audio input and output to the smartphone. This concept is hugely beneficial to musicians and audiophiles, giving the Moto Z HiDef audio ports (such as those found in recording studios and expensive speaker systems) that can transmit audio to applicable headphones/speakers in a much higher way than the standard headphone jack.“This is crazy. I didn’t really expect this, but I know we all put in our maximum effort and it came together,” said Andrew Afflitto when they were announced as the winners.
“Sidepad” – Gabriel Ortiz and Aaron Franco
While playing games on smartphones is fun, the best gamepads are ones that are bigger than the mobile device and provide a more immersive experience. As a full-featured gamepad concept, Sidepad seeks to provide this enhanced experience for true gamers by adding gaming controls on the Moto Z (buttons versus touchscreen). According to Aaron Franco, it was “totally worth staying up all night.”“Bella” – Ally Cheung, Nancy Wan and Sylvee Lee
Bella is a skin care companion for your pocket that provides personal beauty and skincare tips. This concept allows Moto Z to 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.“As modern women, we think it’s useful to be able to monitor our skin and stay youthful. It was such an amazing experience,” said Ally Cheung and Nancy Wan after learning they were in the winners circle.
The next Mod the Future Hackathon will be held in San Francisco on January 21-22nd, 2017. As with the New York Hackathon, the winning teams will receive $5,000 and a Moto Z/Moto Mods Development Kit for each team member. One member from each winning team will travel to Chicago at a future date to present their concepts at Motorola headquarters.
What do you think about the winning Moto Mod concepts? What do you think would make a good Moto Mod? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
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