By Mariel van Tatenhove, VP Product

What I saw yesterday at Lenovo Tech World 16 was by far the most innovative products and concepts in the mobile space I have seen in years.

An invitation only event, Lenovo Tech World ‘16 was intended to give the press as well as select customers and partners an overview of Lenovo’s vision of computing going forward, in addition to launching some of their new flagship products.

 

 

Goodbye to personal computers; hello connected smart devices

As soon as we arrived, we could tell the energy in the air was palpable. The event kicked off with Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing taking the stage to explicate his vision for the future of computing, one of his key points being that “this is the end of the era of personal computing.”

Although a surprising statement to hear from the CEO of a traditionally PC-heavy company, this marked the beginning of an event that would go on to emphasize the shift from personal computing towards connected and smart computing. YY articulated Lenovo’s new vision and focus on connected computing, to which he then brought out some of his partners to announce their new groundbreaking joint projects: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich detailed the launch of the two companies’ new platform for virtual reality, and Google Engineering Director and Tango lead Johnny Lee announced their joint collaboration on the Lenovo Phab 2 phone.

 

Augmented reality from your phone

Phab 2 phone integrates Google Tango technology to offer users the first phone that has augmented reality capability. .Lenovo showed off some of its potential applications, from gaming to creating a virtual world in addition to your real enviroment. The most interesting and exciting moment was when they introduced a partnership with Lowe’s on the creation of a software that enables – via Lenovo and Tango – augmented reality in the home. Think evaluating how your home can look in terms of furniture, decorations, accessories, and more all through the augmented reality on your phone.

 

 

Moto Z - the first truly modular phone

The biggest announcement, however, was the introduction of two new phones, the Moto Z and the Moto Z Force, that I believe are basically changing the way we will use our phones and computers. Aside from the ultra-thin, lightweight, sleek, and durable design, – Lenovo promised that the Moto Z Force screen will not shatter even if dropped from a height o meters directly onto concrete. The Moto Z is the first elegant example of truly modular computing with the potential for all kinds of accessories. These accessories, coined as Moto Mods, are easily attachable and snap onto the back of the phone. As CEO YY put it, “there are a lot of features that people want, but if you put everything in one phone, it’ll come out clunky, too big, and nobody will be using them all the time.”

 

 

The Moto Mods accessories can be snapped on and added wherever and whenever necessary to augment the phone’s functionality: “Snapping is the new flipping.” The current existing Moto Mods include battery packs, a superfast charge, an incredibly high quality JBL speaker mod that filled the entire auditorium during their live demo and a mini projector.

 

 

And for Keyssa, the most exciting Moto mod being developed is the one for OneCompute, the mod that will turn your Moto Z phone into a full computer. You will hear more from us on this in the next couple of days

Keyssa would like to congratulate, Lenovo, on an incredible job well done. Lenovo brought back innovation, creativity and excitement, in a market that had started to become a bit boring and commoditized.