The Moto G4, the Moto G4 Plus, and the Moto G4 Play were all announced this week by Lenovo (which owns Motorola). But it looks like we won't be getting a "Moto X4" or anything named with an X this year, as reports now have the company rebranding its flagship smartphone as the "Moto Z."

Many other rumors attributed to the Moto X4 or Moto X 2016 seem to still apply to the Moto Z. Just the name will be different, as VentureBeat first reported on Tuesday.

Goodbye Moto X

As VentureBeat noted, Motorola's decision to change its branding isn't exactly unheard of, especially for smartphones this year. For HTC, the One brand that started in 2012 turned this year into the HTC 10. Meanwhile, Sony changed their flagship smartphone branding in the exact opposite way as Motorola, from the Xperia Z to the Xperia X.

Maybe Moto was trying to differentiate, or did the company always have its eyes on the "Z" and took the opportunity Sony afforded it this year?

The one other change that could ripple from the Moto Z branding decision is possibly with the company's Verizon variants, known since 2009, until this year, under the "Droid" brand: the Droid Maxx and Droid Turbo, and later their sequels and variants.

According to the VentureBeat report, the company will instead keep the Moto Z up front, and with its Verizon variants, simply add "Droid Edition" to the end of the name.

Same Rumored Specs, Timeline

In any case, the Moto Z expectations and rumors haven't changed with the name. We're still expecting two variants of the 2016 flagship, both with 5.5-inch screens, and both with fingerprint scanners, modular back plates, and the same expected Snapdragon chipsets for either.

The unveiling of the Moto X4 or Moto Z phones is expected to happen on June 9 at the Lenovo Tech World show in San Francisco. Expect Motorola's flagships to start shipping soon after.

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