Motorola's next phone could look totally different than any previous model

Press renders allegedly showing Motorola's upcoming Moto X smartphone were leaked on Sunday by Chinese Motorola blog hellomotoHK on its Google+ page, and it looks completely different than any Motorola smartphone we've seen before.

hellomotoHK.com/Google+

The latest press renders for the new Moto X.

First off, the renders show metal smartphones, which Motorola hasn't released before. The phones in the render also look identical to an alleged image of the Motorola Moto X that was leaked back in December last year, also by hellomotoHK.

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hellomotoHK

An earlier leaked image of the Moto X.

According to notorious gadget leaker Evan Blass in a post on VentureBeat, there will be two new Moto X smartphones with some key differences. One will be a thicker model called "Vertex," and the other will be thinner and called "Vector Thin."

Blass also claims that you'll be able to switch backplates with your own custom designs. That wouldn't surprise us in the least, as one of Motorola's signature smartphone features is its Moto Maker customization tool that lets you choose colors and materials of your Moto X when you buy it.

Apparently, the thinner Vector Thin model will have all the premium specs, including:

• A super-sharp quad-HD (1440p) 5.5-inch screen
• The latest and very powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor
• A 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and phase-detection auto-focus
• Either three or four gigabytes of RAM.

The thicker Vertex model will have relatively mid-tier specs, including:

• A sharp-enough full-HD (1080p) 5.5-inch screen
• A relatively less powerful Snapdragon 625 processor
• A 16-megapixel camera with phase-detection auto-focus, but no OIS
• Two gigabytes of RAM

Both appear to have home buttons on the bottom bezels, which Blass says will also feature a fingerprint sensor for unlocking the phone and making mobile payments with Android Pay.

Not like the others

On paper, these devices could be any of the premium Android flagships that were recently released, like the Galaxy S7, LG G5, or HTC 10.

hellomotoHK.com/Google+

The two rows of connection ports for new modules, apparently.

However, Blass reports the new Moto X will have a very different feature than most phones. The two rows of dots along the devices' bottom back are apparently connection ports that will let you connect modules, which Motorola will apparently call "Amps," that add different functions to the devices.

The modules include:

• Stereo speakers
• A battery pack
• A camera grip with flash and real optical zoom (as opposed to the fake digital zooming that degrades quality the more you zoom in)
• A pico (tiny) projector
• A rugged cover with a wide-angle lens attachment

It sounds similar to LG's G5 smartphone, which has a removable bottom that lets you connect modules that do different things, like letting you swap out the battery with a fresh one, as well as a camera grip and an audio amp. Yet, the G5 forces you to turn the phone off as the modules and removable bottom are connected to the battery.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech Insider

The LG G5's removable bottom lets you swap battery packs.

The new Moto X phones, as Blass claims, will attach to the devices magnetically, which means you can swap them in and out easily without turning off the phone or removing any part of the phone.

No official details of Motorola's next smartphones exist yet, nor do we know when Motorola will announce them or how much they'll cost. However, you can see the date "Fri August 24" on two of the devices' screens, which is about a month later Motorola announced the 2015 Moto X.