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Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 Review

Charles TYK

The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 was launched in July, which is the company’s second iteration gaming phone. I finally managed to get the phone to play around for a few weeks. With many gaming phones now available in the market, just how unique is this phone? We’ll find out in the full review.

Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 Specs

Before we proceed, the review unit I’m having is the 16GB RAM + 512GB storage model, which is the highest configuration you can get right now.

The front of the phone has a 6.92-inch Full HD+ AMOLED 8-bit HDR gaming display with a 144Hz refresh rate and 720Hz touch sampling rate. Yup, that’s a huge display, nearly a 7-inch display that we used to see on a mini-sized tablet.

Overall, the display is pretty smooth and responsive. It also comes with professional-grade Delta E <0.5 color accuracy and HDR10+, which provides a good viewing experience. There are two stereo speakers that come with Dolby Atmos tech.

The Legion Phone Duel 2 comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor, which is located in the middle of the screen. I would actually prefer it to be positioned slightly lower, but that’s something you’ll get used to.

The right side of the phone houses the power button, that’s where the 44MP selfie camera will pop up. It also has a grille for better thermal control.

The left side of the phone has the volume rocker and the USB-C port. Yup, just like the ROG Phone, it has two USB-C ports, one at the side another one at the bottom, if you hold the phone in portrait mode.

The back of the phone is something we’ve not seen on a phone. There’s a protruding glass plate located at the center of the phone, which houses the dual-camera setup, the fan, and the RGB Legion logo. Looking at the design of the Legion Phone Duel 2, this phone is clearly designed to use it in landscape mode.

Additionally, the phone also comes with Octa-Trigger, eight virtual keys that offer players: four ultrasonic shoulder keys, two rear capacitance screen touchpoints, and two in-display force touchpoints.

Powering the phone is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor with 16GB RAM and 512GB UFS 3.1 storage. Sadly, it’s not the upgraded Snapdragon 888 Plus SoC, but it’s expected since the phone was announced before the Snapdragon 888 Plus SoC.

The overall gaming experience is quite as expected for a gaming phone — everything runs pretty smooth without any hiccups. The built-in fan does help a little bit in cooling down the phone, but it’s not that significant. As for the extra virtual buttons, a.k.a Octa-Trigger, you’ll need some time to get used to them. Obviously, the overall experience is nowhere near the physical buttons, but it’s an advantage if you are used to them.

The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 runs on ZUI 12.5 based on Android 11. As I mentioned earlier, the phone is designed to use in landscape mode, so everything from the lock screen to the home screen can also be used in landscape mode. The UI offers two styles — Legion gaming looking and vanilla Android looking.

It comes with Legion Assistant, which optimizes your gaming experience. Just swipe down from the top when you are in a game and it’ll bring out the Legion Assistant. You can change the fan mode, customize the trigger buttons, and even stream your gameplay with the pop-up front camera on, which also comes with autofocus.

One handy feature is the Bypass Charging mode, which powers the phone via USB-C. This is a pretty handy feature if you plan to game for a long time. Doing it will preserve your battery lifespan, it’s the same concept as removing your laptop battery and powering it using the charger, back then when the laptop battery is still removable.

In terms of camera, the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 packs a dual-camera setup — 64MP OmniVision OV64A main camera + 16MP 123° ultra-wide lens. Yup, gaming phones don’t really have great cameras, so don’t expect too much.

Ultra-Wide

16MP Main

64MP Main

Night Mode

The 64MP main camera shoots 16MP photos by default due to the Quad-Bayer technique. Image quality generally is quite okay, the ultra-wide cam shoots greener photos compared to the main cam. Night mode is surprisingly better than expected, but still, I think you would prefer the photos taken with the ROG Phone 3 (since we didn’t get to review the ROG Phone 5/5s). You can check all the camera samples here.

The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 packs a 5,500mAh battery (2,750mAh x 2) with 90W Turbo Charging. Do note that you can only get 90W charging if you charge the phone using two USB-C cables (one port at the side, one port at the bottom), charging with one cable only gets up to 65W. Lenovo claims that the phone will hit a 100% charge in just 30 minutes.

Based on my test, 15% to 100% took 37 minutes, 7 minutes longer than the company’s claim. It’s quite okay but when you have tried the Xiaomi 11T Pro’s 120W HyperCharge, which fully charged the phone in less than 20 minutes using one cable, it’s not really that impressive. Also, the phone gets really hot when charging at full speed, which is also a reason why it took longer to charge just to cool down the phone.

The battery life is pretty impressive! I was able to get up to 2 days of battery life easily, it’s hard to kill the battery at the end of every day. If the phone has a good battery life, I don’t mind having a slow charging speed since I can charge it at night when I’m not using it.

Final Words

The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 is now available at Lenovo Exclusive Stores (LES) nationwide and official stores on Lazada and Shopee. The recommended retail prices start from:

If you are a gamer, the phone nails every aspect that a good gaming phone needs to have — good display, impressive speakers, top-notch performance, and great battery life. The Bypass Charging mode is a great feature for those who are planning to game for a long time. If you are not a gamer, then you shouldn’t even look as it’s a huge and bulky phone with mediocre cameras.

Yay

Nay

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