Lenovo Legion Phone Duel Review: Unleashing the Power of Mobile Gaming!

Lenovo just released its first gaming phone ever, the Legion Phone Duel, which boasts top-line specifications and functions. It comes fitted with the Snapdragon 865 Plus flagship mobile chipset with sub-6 5G connectivity.

Lenovo's first foray into the mobile game arena is the Legion Phone Duel, to compete with other gaming devices such as the latest ROG Phone 3. We got a chance to try out this Lenovo flagship smartphone, and here's our review.

Design and Built
The Legion Phone Duel is a large and hefty device, weighing 239 g, and comes with a large display. Gamers will love the back design, every time it's used, the Lenovo Lego and the Legion brand glow with RGB colors, and what's cool is that it can be personalized based on your mood.

It has a cool slogan that says "stylish outside, savage inside" as well. Now that's a declaration: if it had had RGB lights, it would look more awesome.

The back has a glossy glass surface, making it a fingerprint and smudge magnet, but good thing it comes with a nice protective case with a nice cut-out design that also gives a better grip while playing games.

This phone has a gaming accent all over, and the haptic button on the side is just nice for easy and comfortable use.

The Legion Phone Duel, unlike most smartphones, only has a dual-rear camera on the back with a 64-megapixel main sensor with a quad-pixel sensor and an ultra-wide 16-megapixel secondary rear camera. Although the front-facing camera is placed on the side that pops out when you need to use it, it's more than a selfie camera, later on, it will tackle its unique feature.

A wide 6.56-inch Full DH+ AMOLED display is available upfront, and the stereo speakers are mounted on the top and bottom of the display. The standard 3.5mm audio jack is absent, but it comes with a Type-C converter in the package so that you can use your preferred headphones.

The Legion Phone Duel's dual Type-C port is another great feature, one positioned at the bottom and the other one on the side for super-fast charging capabilities.

The SIM slot is located at the bottom with a back-to-back nano-SIM design that supports 5G connections. There is no microSD card slot because this phone already has massive storage capacity.

The power button is placed on top of the pop-up selfie camera, and the volume rocker is on the other side beside the Type-C port. On top of the pop-up selfie camera is where the power button is mounted, while the volume rocker is on the other side beside the Type-C port.

This smartphone is a well-designed gaming phone, and its gaming accent adds more value to its already premium look. With the glowing logo and side pop-up selfie camera, it's going to be a crowd-pleaser.

Display
This gaming phone features a 6.56-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display, it's not Quad-HD, but it still looks fantastic. It has a 144Hz refresh rate, and it also supports the highest refresh rate up to 144Hz if the games support it.

Too bad since most Android games can only support 60fps, like Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile. But I might expect an update on popular games to support a higher refresh rate for a better game experience.

Watching videos is amazing with its large display, and its 19.5:9 aspect ratio looks great in landscape mode, especially when playing games, particularly shooting games.

It also has an in-display fingerprint scanner, it's placed in the lower part of the display, and the fingerprint icon can be customized in the settings menu. It also supports 4D U-touch, which can replace the usual display navigation keys.

The 144Hz display refresh rate also ensures smoother visuals for select games, although the list of Android games unlocked to exceed 60fps is still frustratingly low, with both Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile disappointingly restricted to 60fps. The list of mobile games to support 144fps is growing, with noticeable titles including Fortnite, Alto’s Adventure, and Minecraft, so it’s certainly still a very useful feature to have on a gaming phone.

Cameras
Unlike most Android smartphones that are equipped with more than four cameras, The Legion Phone Duel only sports dual rear cameras, but these cameras are top of the line, with a 64-megapixel main sensor with a quad-pixel sensor and a secondary 16-megapixel ultra-wide sensor.

The main camera is very capable, it can capture really good images, and it's capable of 4K video recording. It supports macro, night, portrait, pro, panorama, slow-mo, time-lapse, and dual camera modes.

See all the sample shots here of the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel

While the front-facing camera is something special, the 20-megapixel f/2.2 pop-up selfie camera is not only great for taking selfies or groupies, but it can also be used as a streaming camera. With the Legion Phone Duel, there's no need for a second camera since it can record 1080p videos, which is more than good enough for game streaming.

Performance
This savage gaming phone packs a very powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus mobile platform clocked at 2.42GHz, paired with an Adreno 650 GPU, and comes with up to 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 3.1 internal storage. It also packs a 5,000mAh battery with a 90W fast charge capability.

There's no question about this phone's performance, it can run all the games you want and all the apps you need smoothly. In a heavy graphics game like Genshin Impact, you can push the graphics setting to the max and enjoy the great animation visuals.

On benchmark tests, the Legion phone showed how powerful the results:

AnTuTu 640,683
Geekbench 4 single-core 4545
Geekbench 4 multi-core 13,367
3DMark Sling Shot Extreme 7743

This gaming phone is designed to be used for a long period of time. Gamers will love to know that it's equipped with dual liquid cooling, so it remains cool at the back, where it usually gets hot when playing games. It does get warm noticeably, but that's normal since the CPU and GPU are working well to keep the playing experience smooth.

To make the gaming experience more intuitive, it features an ultrasonic key on the side or shoulder. It uses vibrations to simulate a button press that feels similar to the trigger buttons of the PlayStation controller. It also features a 3D motion sensor, so you can include the position of the phone to adjust the angle to get that sniper shot.



For audio, the speakers are tuned by Dirac Audio software technology for a 3D stereo sound experience. It’s made possible with dual front-facing stereo speakers with large 1.4cc acoustic chambers for amazing sound quality. Other extra game features of the Lenovo Legion Phone include a 240Hz touch sampling rate, WiFi 6, and 5G connectivity.

Softwares / IU
Out of the box, the Lenovo Legion Phone boots up horizontally. It runs on stock Android IU with Lenovo's gaming theme. The Legion Realm app acts as a game launcher, where you can see all the games on your phone.

You can also launch this app by pressing the two ultrasonic shoulder buttons, and it makes a sound every time it launches.

It comes pre-installed with a full suite of Google apps, and there is no bloatware, which is good. Installing apps is via Google Play, and since this phone comes with huge storage capacity, you can install all the apps you want.

Battery Performance
The Legion Phone Dual is packed with dual 2500mAh batteries along with two separate USB-C charging ports, one at the bottom and the other on the side.

The battery life of this gaming phone is impressive considering it has a large display and powerful CPU, but it still lasted a day of use before it required a recharge.

Charging the battery is simply awesome. Using the two Type-C cables and a powerful 90w charger, the battery can be fully replenished in as fast as 30 minutes. Now that's blazing fast. 

Another advantage of having a side-mounted Type-C port is that you can use it to charge the Legion Phone Dual battery while playing in landscape mode. Now you can play without worrying about tangling the cable.

Lenovo Legion Phone Duel Specs

6.56-inch Full DH+ AMOLED display, 1080×2340 resolution, at 388ppi
144Hz refresh rate
2.42GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus octa-core processor
Adreno 650
8GB/12GB/16GB RAM LPDDR4x
128GB/256GB/512GB UFS 3.1 internal storage
64MP, f/1.8 + 16MP, f/2.2 ultra-wide rear cameras, PDAF, LED flash
20MP f/2.2 pop-up selfie camera
In-display fingerprint scanner
Dirac Audio stereo speakers
Dual SIM, Dual Standby
4G LTE, 5G
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
Bluetooth 5.0
Dual-frequency GPS, GloNASS, BDS, Galileo, and QZSS
USB Type-C
5,000mAh battery, 90W fast charge
Colors: Vengeance Red, Blazing Blue
239g

Verdict
The Legion Phone Dual is not for everyone, given its price tag. But if you are a serious mobile gamer and do a lot of game streaming, this gaming phone is your best option. It offers the best in the industry in terms of performance, amazing display, intuitive gaming features, good battery life, and fast charging capability. Not only that, you have a great-designed phone with a selfie camera that can be used as a webcam while streaming your gameplay.

Pros

Premium gaming design
Amazing AMOLED display
Blazing-fast processor
Dual liquid-cooling
5G ready
WiFi 6
Huge RAM and storage
Good battery life
Dual Type-C Port
Super Fast Charging
Landscape mode selfie camera

Cons
Camera could be better
No audio jack
No microSD card slot
Camera placement seems off

Price
The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel comes in Blazing Blue (12GB RAM/256GB ROM) priced at ₱39,995, and Vengeance Red (16GB RAM/512GB ROM) priced at ₱49,995 and comes with a free Lenovo HT28 TWS for the Blazing Blue model or a Legion H300 Gaming Headset for the Vengeance Red. It's available at authorized Lenovo resellers in the Philippines.

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