My Turn to Play: Lenovo Legion Phone 2 Duel/Pro unveiled!


All the teasers, all the posters and we finally have a launch event, which ended today, 8th April 2021, 8:00pm UTC+8. The phone comes with the slogan “Turn it, Game On” and the livestream is sweet, short and straightforward. So what did Lenovo reveal about the new gaming phone?

Heat Dissipation:

The Twin-Turbo Fan is the main highlight of the Legion Phone 2 Duel

The Legion Phone 2 Duel’s main highlight is its heat dissipation. Lenovo kept bragging about the dual fan system, even in their teasers and rumours.

According to Lenovo, the components that need cooling the most are the charging chip and the processor. So to help dissipate heat, Lenovo has connected two copper pillars between them in the already large vapour chamber, and these two copper pillars connect through the “copper wind tunnel” where the turbo fans will then force airflow to make a single thermal system.

Also, in Lenovo’s testing, the Genshin Impact sample showed that it had a consistent average FPS of 59.6, even after extended playtime.

Octa-Trigger menu and haptics

Another feature Lenovo boasted is its haptic feedback, with “gamepad levels” of haptics (they even created a formula for it). According to Lenovo, there are 11 ways you can interact with your phone using the shoulder pads they have provided, simulating a real console controller.

The haptic feedback triggers have fast response time, the shoulder buttons have a 10ms response time, the force-touch trigger has 40ms response time and the capacitance triggers have a 75ms response time, this was made possible through the formula Lenovo used, which will be described below

The phone is also equipped with Dual X-axis linear vibration motors so you can really feel the haptics and touch

Lenovo also has a built-in app to help control the fans as well as enhance the immersion of your games, they call this app “Legion Assistant”, here you can control the speed of the Twin Turbo fan on how they dissipate heat, as well as performance settings such as Rampage Mode where the phone will have the most optimal settings while using it to its maximum performance.

There are other functions of the app, such as “Turbo Fan” where a user can select from Auto, Quiet or Maximum cooling mode. The “Y-trigger” menu lets you customise the Octa-Trigger haptic feedback, from different controls per game as well as control combinations, this menu is also related to “Force Touch” where a user can adjust their Force Touch preferences, on how long they will tap the screen before a certain command appears.

The “Visual+” setting lets users adjust the display on their liking. “Stream Mode” lets users stream their games. “Shadow Recorder” tracks the last 15s, or highlights of your gameplay so you don’t need to do editing to see your favourite highlights.

Before we move on, Lenovo has used a formula on how the Octa-Trigger feature works.

According to Lenovo, there is little to no movement required for the Octa-Trigger to work. To calculate Finger Movement Efficiency, the company has divided the finger movement speed over the moving distance that is, where you move your fingers across the screen, then adds this calculation to the phone’s response time.

As mentioned, Octa-Trigger requires little movement to work as each finger, including the thumb can be aligned to the virtual triggers on the phone, making for a fast and responsive touch response.

Technical Specs

Now let’s get more general. As expected, the phone will be equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G processor with a choice of 12, 16 or 18GB RAM with storage from 256 or 512GB.

The phone has a large 5500mAh battery split into two 2750mAh battery cells. On top of that, the phone supports dual Type-C 90W fast charging (that’s right, you read it right, TWO USB-C PORTS!) which charges the phones to full in 30 minutes, as advertised. A single port has 45W charging. Charging it twice from both ports accumulates to 90W fast charge. There is one port at the bottom, and one on the side.

The design choice for this one is really strange, it is designed to hold horizontally, even the cameras are placed in the middle, so when you’re holding the phone upright, you’re literally blocking the view from the camera. It might take some time to get used to. It is designed this way because its purpose is to game, and any hardcore game is in landscape orientation.

One of the most interesting design choices is how they placed the 44mp front camera. It’s a pop-up cam but placed at the side, doubling as a power button and mimicking a high-quality webcam when placed on top of a monitor. Lenovo even lets users create their own Virtual Avatar (kinda like a VTuber, but 3D generated) in case they don’t want seeing their face. The front cam can record 240fps slow motion as well as 4K. This camera is truly stream-ready.

Lenovo did not do much for the camera (as it is meant for gaming after all), and probably for budget reasons, they have decided to go practical and went with two camera systems: a 64mp wide-angle camera and a single 16mp 123° FOV ultrawide camera. The main camera has 8K HDR10+ video recording as well as RAW shooting in the “Pro Mode” section of the camera software

The Lenovo Legion Phone 2 Duel has a 6.92″ AMOLED display with 144Hz Refresh Rate and 720Hz sampling rate. It supports HDR10+ for vivid viewing angles and TUV “blue light” certified, which means there are less blue light (enable in settings) to help protect the eyes

According to Lenovo, they used a special Pixelworks i6 display chip to help analyse objects and pixels that are being rendered and adjusts the display accordingly

For the sound, the phone has dual stereo speakers enhanced by Dolby Atmos, and because of the 3D X-Axis Linear Vibration Motors, users can feel the difference in sound, whether a gunshot or an explosion, or engine revving during the start of every race. It also has four noise-cancelling microphones to help in filtering out noise during recording

PRICE:

The Lenovo Legion Phone 2 Duel will launch globally with a starting price of 799 EUR (~46.1K php) for the 12/256 storage/ram option, 999 EUR (~57.6K php) for the 16/512 option, and 1099 EUR (~63.4K php) for the 18/512 option. All phones except the base version, will come with the gaming dock that lets you connect the phone to your monitor. We’ll wait until Lenovo announces availability here.

To recall, the first Lenovo Legion Phone Duel launched in the Philippines for 39,995 php for the 12/256 option and 49,995 php for the 16/512 option. However since the international base price for the Duel 2 launched at a higher price, we can expect a much more expensive pricing than the first Lenovo Duel, and possibly, 2 of three storage options

Source: Lenovo Legion Phone DUEL 2 LAUNCH EVENT (has ended)