Following a major leak yesterday, Lenovo officially announced its new gaming smartphone. Dubbed the ‘Legion Phone Duel 2,’ the phone sports a weird design that should give gamers an edge over the competition.
The Legion Phone Duel 2 sports Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 5G, up to 18GB of RAM and up to 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. And, of course, RGB lighting — no gaming product would be complete without it. The Phone Duel 2 features a 6.92-inch AMOLED 2460 x 1080 pixel resolution HDR10+ display with a 144Hz refresh rate and 720Hz touch sampling rate.
In a press release about the phone, Lenovo touted its second-gen ‘Advanced Technology Architecture, or ‘ATA 2.0,’ which keeps the phone cool through large passive cooling vapour chambers and an active ‘Twin Turbo-Fan.’ Plus, ATA 2.0 enables “unparallel[ed] symmetry when playing in gamer preferred landscape mode.”
It sounds silly, but Lenovo essentially designed the Phone Duel 2 around landscape use. That includes the 44-megapixel pop-up camera, which comes out of the side of the phone rather than the top, as well as the inclusion of shoulder buttons along the edge to use in games. Lenovo describes them as “four ultrasonic shoulder keys.” There are also “two rear capacitance screen touchpoints, and two in-display force touchpoints,” which are presumably other types of pseudo buttons that gamers can map controls to.
Interestingly, Lenovo says it used dual batteries for a combined 5,500mAh of power. The company positioned a 2,750mAh cell on either side of the CPU to balance the weight. Lenovo also boasted about the phone’s ultra-fast 90W charging, which can fully charge the device in just 30 minutes. Except, the phone features two USB-C ports and it sounds like you need to use both to achieve that charging speed. Plus, Lenovo notes that the 90W charger is sold separately.
Lenovo expects the phone will be available starting in April 2021 in China under the name Legion Phone 2 Pro. It’ll also come to select markets in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe in May 2021, while North American availability is “to be determined.”
The Legion Phone Duel 2 12GB RAM/256GB storage config will start at €799 (about $1,198.54 CAD). Further, the 16GB/512GB config, which includes a charging dock (although it isn’t clear if it’s the 90W charger or something else) will cost €999 (roughly $1,498.55 CAD). It’s worth noting both European prices include the Value Added Tax (VAT).
