This weekend a series of photos depicting Motorola’s next-gen Moto X and Droid smartphones hit the web. Today Motorola’s parent company Lenovo announced it’d be holding its second Tech World conference on June 9th, and officials would use the opportunity to show off “new mobile technology” from Motorola that lets you change the way you use your phone “in a snap.”

Now that language is starting to make a little more sense, because VentureBeat reports that the next-gen Moto X smartphones will support a series of modules that you can snap onto the back of the phones to add functionality.

For example, snap on a battery pack for extra battery life or a pico projector module for beaming images to a screen.

So it’s likely that the next-gen Moto X smartphones will be officially unveiled on June 9th… not on May 17th, when Lenovo/Motorola is expected to introduce its next low-cost Moto G smartphone.

moto x 2016

VentureBeat’s Evan Blass says the Moto X modules will be called “Amps,” and that there will be six available at launch, including those mentioned above, and a colored backplate, a stereo speaker, a camera grip with optical zoom and flash, and a rugged cover with a wide-angle lens attachment.

Motorola wouldn’t be the first company to experiment with modular smartphones. LG recently launched its G5 smartphone, featuring a slot that allows you to connect a handful of accessories including a camera grip and Hi-Fi audio module. And while the Fairphone 2 doesn’t currently support add-on modules, it’s designed to be easy to take apart, making it easy to repair or upgrade individual modules.

Blass says his information comes from someone briefed on Motorola’s plans, and that there will be two different versions of the 2016 Moto X. One is code-named Vector Thin, and the other is known as Vertex. Those probably won’t be their official names though.

The Vector Thin has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 3GB or 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a 16MP camera with phase detection and laser-assisted autofocus.

The Vertex is said to be a cheaper device with a Snapdragon 625 processor, a 13MP camera with laser autofocus and optical image stabilization, and a choice of 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage or 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

Both phone reportedly have 5.5 inch AMOLED displays, but the Vector Thin has a 2560 x 1440 pixel screen while the Vertex has a 1920 x 1080 pixel screen.

One area where the cheaper phone wins out is battery capacity: the Vertex has a 3,500 mAh battery compared with a 2,600 mAh battery for the Vector Thin (which, as the name suggests, is a thinner phone).

 

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