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00:00Battery's low.
00:05Yeah, plug it in.
00:06There.
00:07Yep.
00:08I just wish it was faster.
00:19Yeah, plug it in.
00:30Hey, what's up, MKBHD here.
00:46And this Lenovo Legion Duel 2 is already the fastest, most powerful phone I've ever used.
00:54But there is so much more to a phone than just pure speed.
00:59And you know, you know those people who like every couple of weeks sort of make their way
01:02around headlines and YouTube comments saying phones are getting boring again and everything
01:08looks the same and there's no innovation anymore.
01:12This one's for you.
01:13So this is one of the weirdest phones I've ever seen.
01:17And it tries a bunch of new things.
01:19And they're not necessarily always fantastic ideas.
01:22But sometimes you got to try a bunch of weird stuff to land on a great idea.
01:25So I'm just here to point the camera at the thing and show you what they've tried.
01:30So as you can probably tell from the name and the general aesthetic, it's a gaming phone.
01:34And they are not shy about it.
01:36So you know how some of the gaming phones lately started off pretty aggressive, but
01:39then have slowly started to get a little softer, at least aesthetically.
01:43Not this one.
01:45Not this one.
01:46This one barely really even looks like a phone at all.
01:48It honestly looks more just kind of like a mobile game console that happens to make phone
01:54calls and send texts, take pictures.
01:57So the whole thing is laid out horizontally like this, because you know, any real games
02:04on your phone are going to be the horizontal ones.
02:07And so all the components inside are laid out horizontally.
02:11Now when I tell you this phone has a 5,500 milliamp hour battery, you might be wondering
02:16where could you fit that in a phone this shape, but that battery is split between the left
02:22side and the right side of the phone, literally.
02:24So 2,750 milliamp hours on the right and 2750 on the left.
02:29And I actually think this is a great idea.
02:31It has multiple benefits.
02:33First of all, the sides of the phone where your fingers usually are actually stay cooler
02:36to the touch because of all the hot components that require cooling all being lined up in
02:41the middle.
02:42The weight distribution is also now perfectly even, and that lets them focus all the cooling
02:47on just that smaller portion, just the middle of the phone.
02:50And that's exactly what they do.
02:51So you can see they gave it a whole turbine fan that happens to actually light up if you
02:55want it to, you know, gamery stuff.
02:58It's next to the RGB logo on the back.
03:00And there's a vent on each side to exhaust the hot air from the CPU, GPU, and motherboard,
03:05RAM, et cetera.
03:06There also doesn't have to be a separate camera bump because the cameras are in the middle
03:11too.
03:12I'm telling you, nothing about this phone is conventional.
03:14So you might remember pretty recently the whole dual battery turbo charging thing in
03:19some other phones, like VOOC charging and all that, OnePlus did it.
03:23And that would be literally because they'd have a split battery inside the phone.
03:26So phones with this tech could charge at 50 Watts, for example, because both batteries
03:30would charge in parallel at 25 Watts each.
03:34This phone kind of takes it to a hilarious extreme.
03:38There are two USB-C ports on the phone, and it comes with this 90 Watt charging brick
03:46with two USB-C ports on the brick.
03:49And if you plug in the two included USB cables from the box into both of those USB-C ports
03:56and plug in both of the USB ports on the phone, one on the bottom, one on the side, you can
04:02charge this thing at 90 Watts, which is crazy fast.
04:05You can get 50% charge from dead in 13 minutes or literally go zero to a hundred and a half
04:11an hour, which is very impressive for a battery this big.
04:14But it's also kind of hilarious seeing your phone plugged in twice.
04:17And it might be a little bit of a hassle to carry this heavy brick and two charging cables
04:21everywhere you go, but the satisfaction of plugging in both ports on the phone and seeing
04:27the animation light up and the battery percentage just starting to jump up, yeah, I'd say that's
04:33worth it.
04:34Plus this is a phone with a lot of other well thought out battery options.
04:37So they offer bypass charging, so you can just power it from a cable instead of just
04:41the battery to avoid heat like we saw with the ROG Phone 5.
04:45Also there's all kinds of charging limiters to preserve long-term battery health.
04:48It's a nice trend to see this stuff more baked in.
04:50You can of course also always just plug in with one port like any other lame phone with
04:55only one charging port, but of course you're only going to get 45 Watts that way, you know.
05:00But hey, being able to plug in from the side is way more comfortable if you're gaming.
05:04So that's why the gaming phones do that.
05:06Love it.
05:07Man, this phone has the works as far as hardware goes, as you'd expect, dual front facing speakers
05:13in this sort of aggressive triangular shape that gets very loud.
05:18A huge 6.92 inch, 144 Hertz, 1080p OLED display up front with a ridiculous 720 Hertz touch
05:28sampling rate and 1300 nits peak brightness.
05:32There's a ton of touch sensitive remappable buttons on the sides and the back of this
05:37thing.
05:38So for gaming, it's got everything you need.
05:40And to drive all this, you've got the Snapdragon 888, up to half a terabyte of fast storage
05:44and up to 18 gigs of RAM.
05:48So this is the most maxed out phone on paper again, and it definitely translates to responsiveness.
05:54There's no question about that.
05:55It's the snappiest phone I've ever laid hands on, even when you're not gaming, just flipping
05:58around the UI, multitasking, et cetera.
06:02But you know what?
06:03That's maybe the least important thing about a phone like this, right?
06:07It's a gaming phone.
06:08We want to know how it games, okay?
06:10Now let's be real for a second.
06:13When it comes to mobile gaming, I would consider myself a bit of a casual.
06:17I think that's a fair description.
06:20Like I've reviewed gaming phones before, but I don't play the most intensive games.
06:24It's kind of like reviewing a supercar without taking it to the track.
06:28Like you get a better idea of what it's like to live with, sure.
06:31But it leaves out a pretty big reason why you'd get a car like that.
06:34So I could tell you from my extremely casual gaming use that this phone absolutely crushes
06:39everything, as you'd expect.
06:41It's actually overkill usually.
06:43I don't get any functional advantage from a 720 Hertz touch refresh rate when I'm playing
06:49Among Us.
06:50Like it's really more than enough.
06:51But even when you're playing a heavier game like Asphalt 9, you can start to feel the
06:55combined advantages of everything this phone does start to come to life.
06:59The high refresh rate and the screen look incredible and super sharp and immersive,
07:04of course.
07:05The super high touch-and-apple rate is great for making quick cuts and moves in the car,
07:09but also the customizable triggers on the shoulder of the phone come in handy because
07:14now you're touching the same spot on the screen over and over again for nitro and drifting
07:18so you can just map those to the shoulder triggers.
07:20So that's really nice to never have to block the screen with my fingers.
07:24And there's way more than I'd ever need.
07:26This phone has four ultrasonic shoulder keys with a hundred Hertz touch sample refresh
07:30each and two more rear capacitive touch points.
07:35Plus you've got two more force touch spots on either side of the display.
07:38So obviously the games I played don't need all that.
07:41But if you do, you've got all these extra keys as an option.
07:44Now if you're playing a game like Asphalt 9, after a while, pretty much any phone is
07:48going to start to get pretty warm.
07:49Now the outside of this phone actually legit stayed a little bit cooler on the outsides
07:54where my fingers are versus the middle, which got warmer and spun up the fan and kept performance
08:00high.
08:01That is an actual real measurable benefit that I felt, not just a gimmick.
08:04And then something you also quickly notice, and I'll just have to describe it to you because
08:07it's kind of hard to show it on video.
08:09This phone has two haptic motors, one linear haptic motor on each side of the phone.
08:16And they combine to make a really strong, thumpy, punchy vibration motor.
08:23It is really impressive.
08:25I'm going to say it's the most strong and impressive vibration I've felt in any phone.
08:30I don't think any other phone has two.
08:32And so it's awesome when gaming.
08:34Any sort of light interaction, footsteps, scraping by something, every gunfire really
08:40feels strong on this phone.
08:43I keep calling it a phone, but on this mobile gaming console.
08:47But also when you do just use it like a phone, typing on the keyboard, an alarm clock, everything
08:52you'd expect to vibrate, it is very strong.
08:56But hey, like I said, I'm just a casual.
08:58So I handed this phone to Andrew, resident gaming enthusiast here at the studio, but
09:03also a longtime PUBG player, handed him this phone with PUBG mobile on it.
09:08And not exaggerating, his first game, he methodically sort of learns the mechanics through the first
09:13few minutes.
09:14He's getting some kills, picking up ammo and supplies.
09:17The circle starts shrinking, other people start dying, and he starts getting a few more
09:22kills.
09:23The fans start spinning up as the phone starts to hum along and keep those frames up.
09:27And sure enough, seven kills later, he wins the game.
09:30His first game, chicken dinner, made it look easy.
09:32Now I'm not saying this phone is the reason why he won, but that is pretty impressive.
09:40Now when you're in a game and you just want to toggle a setting or something like that
09:42real quick, you can just swipe down from the top.
09:44And then you have a bunch of quickly accessible settings, mostly to do with gaming, your volume,
09:49brightness, signal strength, and your ping is sitting there.
09:53And then your CPU and GPU clock speed, just for kicks, but also with a rampage button
09:59to literally max out the clock speeds to keep those frames up at all costs.
10:04And there's also the bypass charge toggle, if you want to turn that on and you're plugged
10:07in.
10:08And there's also something here you can see called stream mode.
10:11All right, you ready for this?
10:12This is one last gimmick, I promise.
10:13This is the last crazy thing.
10:15The selfie camera is inside the power button, of course.
10:23So that's a 44 megapixel motorized live stream ready selfie camera.
10:28That's literally oriented horizontally all the time because its primary purpose is to
10:32be your webcam if you want to stream your games directly to Twitch or YouTube.
10:38That's right.
10:39The phone is not only ready to max out your games, but it's ready to broadcast your games
10:42with that extremely average quality selfie camera.
10:45I'd expect nothing less.
10:46Also, it's really loud to open and close.
10:48Anyway, this is amazing.
10:54There's honestly no other phone I've ever used that's quite like this.
10:58And it's so weird to keep saying that it's a phone just because it feels like the phone
11:02functionality in this is such an afterthought.
11:06It happens to do other things like, do you even care about the camera quality in a phone
11:11like this?
11:12It happens to be a 64 megapixel primary camera on the back.
11:16That's literally blocked when you open up the camera app because the way you normally
11:19hold a phone puts your fingers right over it.
11:21But it happens to pair that with 123 degree ultra wide.
11:25And collectively, they both take reasonable, acceptable photos and good light.
11:30This thing happens to also send text messages and make phone calls if you really want it
11:34to.
11:35It can also use the internet and browse through other apps.
11:38And it can be an amazing alarm clock with those huge haptics and gigantic speakers.
11:43But all of that feels like it just happens to be true at this point.
11:47This is just, it's the ultimate all in on the gaming phone again.
11:52It's not trying to hide it or be shy about it and do things like wireless charging or
11:58water resistance.
11:59It kind of doesn't matter at this level.
12:02It's just a mobile gaming handheld with cellular.
12:06So even if it's not for me, I'm glad they made it.
12:08I'm glad this exists and I would happily recommend it to other people I know who are much more
12:14into mobile gaming.
12:17But speaking of that, that's the question I want to ask you.
12:20That's what I want to leave you with for this video.
12:23Do any of you watching this video actually consider buying a gaming phone?
12:29Like do any of you play a game on your phone so much that you would specifically get a
12:34phone tailored to being better at that?
12:37And if so, what game are you playing?
12:39Let me know in the comment section below if you know that guy, if you are that guy.
12:43Either way, that's been it.
12:45Thanks for watching.
12:46Catch you guys in the next one.
12:48Peace.