Lenovo has just launched its first gaming smartphone which is named after its popular Legion gaming PC category, it is called Lenovo Legion Duel. Lenovo is the latest company to dive into the gaming smartphone category, and just as you would expect from a brand who already holds a respectable title in the PC world, the Legion duel phone comes with groundbreaking features.
Lenovo has brought a non-familiar design with its new Legion gaming phone. We all are already used to smartphones rear cameras being placed/aligned to either the topmost center of a device or at the top left corner and the front camera being either a hole punch or a pop-up wheel on top of a device. But the Legion Duel phone defies all of that and brought something totally different.
Lenovo gaming smartphone comes with a side-mounted selfie camera which totally looks cool, however, it raises the issue of conveniences when taking selfie photos, the selfie camera placement looks pretty odd and great at the same time. Talk about odd placements of cameras, Lenovo has moved rear cameras to the middle of the device, which also will give uses sometime to adapt to.
Like the Asus ROG Phone 3, the Legion duel gaming phone comes with a dual USB Type-C port, RGB lightning (Rear) and shoulder triggers (which I often refer to as R1 and L1). The company says it has already optimized the shoulder triggers for 130+ games and constantly working with game developers to add more.
Now, lets talk about the specs.
Lenovo Legion Duel gaming phone features a 6.65-inch AMOLED display with the 144Hz refresh rate which was first spotted on the Nubia Red Magic 5G. The display features minimal bezels, dual speakers and comes with a built-in fingerprint reader and 240Hz touch sampling.
The device houses a dual rear camera with a 64MP primary lens, a 16MP ultrawide snapper and a dual LED flash located in the middle. On the front/side, there is a 20MP snapper that i think has been placed there due to the fact that many games runs in lanscape mode. Lenovo also added 4 mics on the device to deliver optimal sound recording. That is a lot of mic on one device.
Lenovo Legion duel is powered by the latest Snapdragon 865 plus 5G enabled Soc with up to 16GB LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB UFS 3.1 storage. There is no expandable slot for SD cards. The device runs the latest Android 10 OS with Legion OS/ ZUI12 on top. The device comes with its own tunning software like other gaming smartphones, the Legion Realm. The software lets you tweak the device to get optimal performance.
The all new Lenovo gaming phone has a 5000mAh battery to power it, this is 1000mAh lesser to what we saw on the ROG Phone 3 but still a good call. There is a 90W fast option for the most premium variant with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, while other memory options gets a 65W fast charging tech.
Legion Duel also sports an advanced cooling system with two heat pipes as well as Lenovo’s U-Engine dual X-axis vibration motor which promises over 100 types of long vibration patterns and 13 kinds of low-response ones. Other specs include Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot, Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, GPS, Water-repellent coating.
Lenovo Legion Duel Quick Specs
- Display: 6.65 inches, 108.6 cm2 (~81.7% screen-to-body ratio), 1080 x 2340 pixels, 19.5:9 ratio (~388 ppi density), 144Hz refresh rate, HDR10+
- Dimension: 169.2 x 78.5 x 9.9 mm (6.66 x 3.09 x 0.39 in), Weight 239 g (8.43 oz)
- Soc: Qualcomm SM8250 Snapdragon 865+ (7 nm+), CPU Octa-core (1×3.09 GHz Kryo 585 & 3×2.42 GHz Kryo 585 & 4×1.8 GHz Kryo 585), GPU Adreno 650
- Memory: 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 16GB RAM, UF1 3.1
- Operating system: Android 10, Legion OS/ ZUI12
- Cameras:
- Rear: 64 MP, f/1.9, 25mm (wide), 1/1.72″, 0.8µm, PDAF, 16 MP, f/2.2, 120˚, 16mm (ultrawide), Dual-LED dual-tone flash, panorama, HDR, 4K@30fps gyro-EIS
- Front: Motorized pop-up 20 MP, f/2.2, 25mm (wide), 1/3.1″, 0.9µm, LED flash, HDR, 4K@30fps
- Sensors: Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
- Battery: 5000 mAh battery, Fast charging 90W, 50% in 10 min, 100% in 30 min (512GB 16GB RAM model), Fast charging 65W, (128GB 12GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM models)
Lenovo Legion Duel Pricing and Availability
Lenovo Legion Duel (or the Legion Phone Pro) will be available in blue and red colours and will go on sale in China start on August 5. The phone is already available for pre-order with the entry-level 8/128GB variant going for CNY 3,499 ($500).
The 12/128GB model will start selling for CNY 3,899 ($557), 12/256GB version for CNY 4,199 ($600) and the top of the line 16 GB RAM and 512GB storage will go for CNY 5,999 ($857) which is lesser compared to the price of regular flagship devices in 2020.
Lenovo Legion Duel Price in Naira
- Legion Duel: 8GB/128G — ≅₦194,000
- Legion Duel: 12GB/256GB — ≅₦216,000
- Legion Duel: 16GB/512GB — ≅₦332,00
The phone is expected to arrive in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America later but there are no plans to for it to launch in the US. I’m not sure why Lenovo skipped the US for now, nonetheless, the Legion duel is an amazing device. Other gaming smartphones launched this year include Black Shark 3, Vivo iQOO.