Lenovo are releasing a smartphone, yes you heard that right Lenovo with a smartphone. I never thought i’d see the day, but jesus what a phone it looks like it’s going to be. The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is a revolutionary gaming smartphone that features an innovative architecture, such as dual batteries and dual-liquid cooling system. The device also features a livestream-ready horizontal pop-up camera to truly enhance the gaming experience. This new type of smartphone which is totally designed to be a gamers dream you can choose between six specially customized layout themes to choose from, each with distinctive design details, colors, and icons that resonate with gamers, you can stay in gaming-centric landscape mode or switch to portrait mode. Plus, home mode allows you to cast to or play on a connected external monitor/TV while using either a wireless keyboard and mouse, or your preferred wired accessories via a dock.
Something Different
The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is built to behave like a console with virtual tools, gaming capabilities, and an optimized battery lasting up to a full day of average phone usage. They use an ergonomic design and the virtual joystick and dual ultrasonic trigger buttons are embedded, and dual vibration engines provide life-like feedback for deeper gameplay immersion. This phone is also going to be the very first to rock the latest top shelf Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 865 Plus 5G Mobile Platform that delivers revved-up performance across the board for incredibly-fast Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming™, plus global 5G support. For enhanced power efficiency, get advanced 5th gen memory chips, up to 16GB high capacity RAM or the optional 12GB configuration, and ample storage up to 512GB.
The screen is also made for gamers with a 6.65-inch Full HD AMOLED glass touchscreen display with 144Hz refresh rate for videos and gaming images so colourful and sharp, essentially the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is made for gamers to create an immersive experience with impressive virtual tools, gaming capabilities, and an optimised battery lasting up to a full day of average phone usage.
Availability & Pricing
The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is available for preorder now with the official release on October 25th. Starting with just the Black model the Red and Blue will be available later on in the year and the pricing is as follows:
- 12GB / 256GB: €899
- 16GB / 512GB: €999
Battery Power
Ok, so the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel very much looks to be a gamers dream and super stylish to boot and they have created advanced methods to better dissipate heat with dual liquid-cooling and copper tubes, plus moving the dual 2500mAh batteries off to the sides where gamers’ hands would rest, Lenovo has made the handset easier to hold while also extending gameplay without the fear of overheating. A design I have never seen before is the side based charging port so that when you are gaming or watching videos in landscape mode your charger wont get in the way of holding the phone like a gaming controller, but there is also a normal base port too meaning you can charge up both, yes both batteries simultaneously for a total of 5000mAh juice. That’s a lot of power and to get a 50% charge only takes 10mins while a full power up takes 30mins thanks to the 90W Turbo Power Charging.
Audio & Video
Again the audio here seems super powerful but as this Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is a specially designed gamers phone of course you can enhance things for clearer situational battle cues in-game, so you can react even faster to the footsteps behind you. It’s made possible with dual front-facing stereo speakers with large 1.4cc acoustics chambers for amazing far-reaching sound quality. This is also combined with a virtual gaming control which means you get near instant, dynamic and surrounding vibrations from the in device engines that will simulate in games hits so you can really feel the game. There is also a built-in gyroscope sensor detects motion and complex orientation changes, like while watching a 360-degree video, or when your screen view autorotates whenever you rotate your phone on its horizontal axis. Although many Android smartphones have one embedded now, the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel leverages its gyro to optimize the gaming experience for the user, for example, its virtual joystick feature works by moving your thumb around on the screen while playing a game, either to aim or to move players in a new direction.
These in-screen touch signals are mapped to gyro sensors which are continually sending data to the display driver resulting in the smooth rotations and execution of commands in-game. The idea is that you can simply tilt and angle your phone to aim or use it as your steering wheel in your favourite racing title. Further enhancing a more tactile gaming experience are the Audio to Vibration (A2V) features, this tool analyses audio directional signals for in-game cues to trigger associated stimulations, allowing you to hear and feel sound and vibration from the right if your race car was hit on that side.
Camera & Software
The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is actually designed to offer gamers a better grip on the phone and despite it’s look it’s lighter than you would think at 239 grams while the real gamer design comes out in the red or cool blue with programmable RGB lighting effects for Lenovo Legion’s recognizable “Y” icon and the back of its pop-up selfie camera. Lights can also be programmed to dynamically change depending on in-game effects for a more immersive experience.
The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel also comes sporting it’s own software dashboard called Lenovo Legion Realm, wherever gamers are, they can tweak hardware performance settings, scroll through the latest downloadable titles in Google Play, and select the enabled network that gives you the best quality and/or least traffic in that moment, i.e. WLAN, 5G, or Wi-Fi, to help reduce video and in-game latency.
Lenovo also state that you can capture general HD 1080p footage and record in 4K at up to 30 FPS for remarkable clarity with a high-powered 20MP front camera that stays tucked inside bezel when not live streaming for a clean look, also features auto-retract drop protection. Plus, a high resolution 64MP rear camera for 64MP resolution photos, which also has a quad pixel sensor for shooting high-quality, 16MP resolution photos in dark and bright conditions.
To self-record your voice and reactions as you play, simply wake the built-in front camera while gaming to simultaneously record and overlay your image on-screen. This feature is compatible with popular streaming apps. With a multiple video lens, anyone can host a streaming channel. You can remove the background and use AI to auto-enhance your image via our selfie editor featuring several unique retouching filters and correction options for adding a sense of style. At launch, users can auto-enhance images with our programmed adjustments for a more balanced appearance.
With the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel, as soon as a gamer ends a session, you can review all the gaming highlights on-the-fly via a preview screen, so all you need do is select, then merge recorded clips together if desired, before easily sharing with others.
And if you’ve just knocked out a tough enemy in a game but forgot to hit record— fear not, just use a finger to slide your right ultrasonic trigger key to the left to go back in time to relive hero moments and instantly reversely-record what just happened to share proof of your victory with battle mates, fans and friends.
The Spec Sheet & Key Features
- Optimal linear motor area
- Dual batteries and dual turbo charging, with side-mounted charging port
- Dual liquid, mid-thermal floating cooling system
- World’s first Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 865 Plus processor
- Ultrasonic dual shoulder keys
- 4D motion-sensing control
- 33ms touch latency with 240Hz touch sampling rate
- 1ms response time and 144Hz refresh rate
- FHD AMOLED display with Dolby Vision™
- Dual front-facing 3X louder than traditional stereo speakers with Dirac Audio
- Customisable LED lighting
- Desktop gameplay mode (keyboard and mouse keymapping enabled)
- Dedicated game launchpad (Legion Realm) and assistant (Legion Assistant)
The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel will be available with up to 16GB LPDDR5 high capacity RAM and ample storage up to 512GB UFS 3.1.Customers ordering from the 1st October will also benefit from a pre-order bundle, choosing either:
- Yoga Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) headphones OR
- Lenovo Smart Clock with Google Assistant
