Final words

I didn’t think anything would be able to impress me after testing ASUS ROG Phone 3, but Lenovo Legion Phone Duel managed to do it in full, being one of the most exciting smartphones ever manufactured. First of all, I am pretty sure that at this moment there are still PCs that don’t have such a powerful chipset, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, not to mention the 144Hz AMOLED HDR10 + display. Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is simply the most powerful smartphone ever built, being a true portable gaming machine.

But Lenovo did not stop here, optimizing the interface for landscape use, placing the camera on the side and integrating streaming functionality, which is increasingly popular and useful today. Moreover, we are dealing with the fastest fast charging implementation available in retail at the moment, the most powerful sound system used on a smartphone, 5G and WiFi 6 connectivity, a camera with solid performance and a construction worthy of a WW2 tank, all integrated into a smartphone that costs significantly less than the top of the range flagships from Samsung, Huawei or Apple.

Of course, this does not mean that there isn’t anything that could be improved – the first things that come to my mind are the lack of an 8K shooting mode, the maximum transfer rate for the 5G connection, and camera set-up, which falls behind Samsung or Huawei flagships. I also have to mention another aspect – Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is a big and heavy smartphone, as a result, if you are not used to large smartphones, most likely Legion Phone Duel is not for you.

However, the size is fully justified – first of all, when it comes to gaming smartphones, a large display really matters. Second, we have the most powerful chipset on the market under the hood, so the cooling system must be top notch, especially for gaming, where we want the highest performance. This means that the components of the cooling system will take some space and will definitely have some weight.

Some users may also wonder about the lifespan of the front camera pop-up mechanism. Well, according to company officials, the pop-up mechanism should last more than 400,000 open/close cycles. Personally, I don’t think I’ve taken 400,000 selfies in 10 years since I’ve been using smartphones, so I don’t think this will be a long-term problem.

In the end, I can say that Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is an important landmark in the history of mobile gaming and I say this for several reasons. First of all, because Lenovo decided to enter this market segment and did it in a big way, bringing all the experience gained in the development of the Legion series into the mobile market. Secondly, because Lenovo Legion Phone Duel proves that we do not necessarily need an active cooling solution, whether internal or external, in order to provide the highest level of performance. And thirdly, because Lenovo Legion Phone Duel has introduced mobile streaming, back recording and fast peripheral integration, features that I expect to see in the future on all gaming smartphones.

And last but not least, because even when we thought we saw it all, and we didn’t expect to see an even better smartphone launched in 2020, Lenovo managed to take things to a different level, due to the hardware implementation, and also to the efforts made to optimize the operating system for landscape use. Lenovo Legion Phone Duel has raised the bar for gaming smartphones, both in terms of performance and in terms of user experience, and I expect other manufacturers to follow their example in the near future.