Well, here we are again with another gaming phone. Gaming phones are usually the coolest
phones and some of my favorites because they push the limits with both design and specs...both of
which can obviously be utilized by everyone, even if gaming isn't your main thing. I didn't really
know Lenovo made smartphones until now. I did use one of their laptops all through college though,
so they have been around for a long time. Opening up the box we get our first glimpse of the phone.
Lenovo sent me their Legion Phone Duel 2 to check out
with a box that's surprisingly optically stabilized. Already innovative...I like it.
Inside the box we get dual USB-C cables, and a charging brick that has dual USB-C
ports. I'm beginning to see why they call this the Duel 2. When both ports are plugged in and
used at the same time, we can apparently juice up the phone with 90 watts of power.
I'll get to that more in a second. The phone is resting on one more box. I'll pull them both
out. And in here we get a little headphone jack adapter, as well as a thin clear plastic case.
And finally, the phone itself. This is one of the most unique looking phones we've seen in a while.
It's got curves in the weirdest places. I'm looking forward to this one. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Right off the bat this phone feels like a solid chunk of brick. It's heavy, thick,
and long, with a very strange abnormal growth in the center. Apparently this center hump is
for the brains of the whole operation, while the dual batteries are off in the wings. In
the hump we've got the center mounted cameras, as well as the RGB leds, and, most importantly,
the dual fans. We've seen one fan before in a cell phone, in the Red Magic gaming phones,
but not two. Taking apart this Duel 2 should be pretty interesting.
But first things first, the scratch test. I have a set of Mohs mineral picks that help
differentiate between different minerals and materials. And every now and then we
have a phone slip into the system that's hiding under a plastic screen protector.
Doesn't take too long to figure out that this Duel 2's incredibly unique anatomy might come with some
issues. Normally the camera bump is up top so the phone rocks left and right. But this time around
with the camel hump in the middle, the phone is rocking top to bottom like a giant seesaw.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but I could see it getting a little annoying trying to one hand type
a message while the phone is laying on a flat surface. It'll bounce around like a bobble head.
Finishing up the scratch test we see that the screen is made from tempered glass by
it's scratches at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7. This is the part where we normally
go find the front facing camera, but as you can clearly see, this phone does not have one...at
least not where we would normally expect it. It's got a side mounted motorized popup camera hidden
underneath the power button. I didn't see that one coming. It's a loud little guy. Apparently it's
here on the side so that gamers can livestream themselves playing games while the phone is being
held horizontally. And it makes quite a bit of sense. And since the camera is motorized,
it's not taking up any pixel real estate inside that display. Pressing the power button, which
is now extended up into the air, still turns off the screen and retracts the camera. It's kind of
weird if you want to take normal vertical selfies of course, but definitely not a deal breaker.
The lens on the front of the camera is made from glass, and is scratch resistant, and impressively
has 44 megapixels. The camera also has fall protection which we've seen on other popup
camera smartphones, where it tries to retract before hitting the ground if it's ever dropped.
The large earpiece speaker grill is made from plastic and won't be falling out on it's own.
It's also one of a pair. Dual loudspeakers on a phone where everything is dual. The bottom
stereo speaker grill is also made from plastic. The right side of the phone is made from metal,
and there's a whole lot going on. No mechanical popup buttons like we saw on the Black Shark
3 gaming phone, but there are a total of four ultrasonic programmable gaming buttons on this
side alone – two on the right side. And then we have the textured metal power button sitting on
top of the motorized camera. And then, of course, the output vent from the internal dual fans
which we'll get to in a second. And then the other pair of programmable buttons on the top side.
The top of the phone is pretty empty. Then over here on the left side of the phone
we have the metal volume rocker and one of the two USB-C ports.
The second USB-C port, of course, is down at the bottom where it normally is
next to the dual SIM card tray which has a slot on either side for SIM cards.
We'll talk more about the USB-C ports in a second.
The back of the phone is interesting of course, like a turtle. We've never seen anything quite
like it. There are an additional two programmable capacitive buttons under that slope of the rear
glass leading up to the center camera mountain. All of these rear surfaces of course are made
from glass. And as we know, a gaming phone can't be a gaming phone without some sweet LED action.
There are two cameras included on Everest here. One is a 64 megapixel main sensor,
and the other is a 16 megapixel wide angle lens – both protected under that same piece of glass.
And, of course, the fans, which are both back here as well.
Now supposedly this fan contraption is specially oriented over the vapor chamber, which helps with
the dissipation. And supposedly, both fans are IP58, meaning that it's protected against water.
But we'll have to see how that's even possible from the inside during the teardown video.
The fans are pretty quiet, and I can get them going full blast with rampage mode.
They are tiny little guys though, with 29 blades each. The intake fan is spinning at 12,500rpm,
and the exhaust fan is spinning at 15,000rpm.
Lenovo says the fans are capable of lowering the internal temperature of the Qualcomm 888 processor
by over 30% compared to other smartphones that have the same chip, which is pretty impressive and
definitely a worthwhile addition to the phone. If I get little pieces of paper sprinkled on my desk,
we can see the exhaust fan moving them a little bit, but it's still a pretty small blower. I
ripped a thread out of my shirt so we can see it a little clearer. A little wisp blowing in the
gentle breeze. A gentle breeze that of course helps you kill your enemies more efficiently.
Speaking of vanquishing enemies efficiently, it does take a lot of energy, and the Legion Phone
Duel 2 has plenty of that. As you've guessed, there are dual batteries – one on either side
of the phone, which is a little worrisome since the dual battery situation didn't work out too
well for the ROG Phone 5. But let's keep our fingers crossed that Lenovo's done it better.
Both of these ports can be used to charge up the batteries. When I plug in one of the cables it
turns on turbo charging. And when both of them get plugged in, it turns on dual turbo charging,
which pumps 90 watts of power into the phone to charge the massive 5,500 milliamp battery
to 100% in just 30 minutes...which has also got to be some kind of record.
Finally, the burn test. We'll make things a little more interesting this time around with a little
help from the fans. It's easy to tell that this is intact by the way it's ingesting the flame
internally. Digesting fire is generally frowned upon, but you got to admit, it looks pretty cool.
The exhaust vent is also strong enough to blow out my lighter, which is pretty impressive.
And at least now we know the fans are good at working in extremely hot environments.
The screen of the Duel 2 is a 6.9 inch 1080p display, with a 144hz refresh rate. And,
most impressively, a 720hz touch sampling rate...which I'm pretty sure is another
record. The touch sampling rate is almost more important than the refresh rate while gaming
since it's how fast the screen can sense what your fingers are doing. And then, of course,
the AMOLED display does last for about 33 seconds under the heat from my lighter
and does not fully recover. Now again, fingerprint scanners are not my favorite,
but I do have a theory about scanners that don't work very well. Usually it's the flat
optical scanners with a sensor and no lens that can't read my fingerprint. And since this phone
is struggling to even set my fingerprint, it'll be interesting to see if my hypothesis
is correct when we open it up from the inside. I'm guessing the optical scanner doesn't have a lens.
Now, when I first picked up this phone, I noticed that it's extremely heavy, to the point where I'm
not even remotely concerned about it breaking. But, you know, there are some weird shapes and
structural designs going on. And, well, turns out there is a weaker gaming phone than the ROG 5. The
Legion Phone Duel 2, with it's two speakers, two fans, and two batteries, is now most definitely
in two pieces. The display is shattered and destroyed underneath that Gorilla Glass 5,
which surprisingly is still intact. At first close up glance at the breaking point,
it looks like pitted porous metal was the culprit of the break.
But it turns out it's a clean snap right along that antenna line, which match up on either
side of the glass hump. The antenna lines are usually plastic to allow the phone to get its
signal since antennas don't work well through metal. Unfortunately though, these same antenna
lines are also symmetrically mirrored at the other end of the camera mountain, which means
the Legion Phone 2 is now the Legion Phone 3...as in it's in 3 pieces. If those antenna
lines were positioned differently or reinforced internally, this might have gone differently.
The front glass is still intact though. Nice work, Corning. A bad year for gaming phones really shows
how well Gorilla Glass holds up. The Legion Phone Duel 2 does not pass my durability test.
Now remember, durability is just one aspect of choosing your next phone. A simple case will
solve the majority of structural issues. And just because I broke it does not make it a bad phone.
It just gives us an idea of what to look out for and what situations to avoid while owning it.
It's a super cool phone, literally and figuratively,
internally and externally. Just don't sit on it. The teardown will still be pretty
interesting. We'll check out those fans from the inside, as well as the supposedly massive
vapor chamber. So hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Come hang out with
me on Instagram and Twitter. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.