
As we all know that Lenovo’s self-branded smartphones may not be nearly as popular as the company’s Motorola-branded devices, but the brand still has fans in Asian countries like India and China. In an effort to capitalize on the company’s existing popularity with gamers, Lenovo is preparing to launch its first-ever Android gaming smartphone under its Legion Gaming brand. The Lenovo Legion gaming phone has been on our radar for over 4 months now, but we’re now ready to share all of the details we’ve uncovered about the device. Thanks to a trusted source, we have obtained multiple unreleased teaser videos that showcase the likely design of the upcoming Legion gaming phone, and we also have a detailed set of specifications to go along with these teasers.
In late December of 2019, Lenovo created a new account called “Legion Gaming Phone” on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Over a month and a half later, Lenovo officially teased the first smartphone under its Legion gaming brand. The company uploaded a poster announcing that this upcoming smartphone will be powered by the Snapdragon 865, Qualcomm’s highest-end SoC for mobile devices. Next, on March 3rd, Chen Jin, General Manager of Lenovo China Mobile, teased that the Legion gaming smartphone will feature a “disruptive new architecture” in order to solve two pain points faced by mobile gamers: different surface temperatures on the left and right sides and reduced charging speeds when gaming. The teasers slowed down for a few weeks as much of the world went into lockdown due to COVID-19.
Early last month, Lenovo ramped up its marketing for the device by uploading a poster that teases 90W fast wired charging on the Legion gaming phone. There was a lot of skepticism initially about whether the Legion phone actually charges at 90W, but Lenovo has since clarified that they aren’t playing a numbers game here. Furthermore, Lenovo’s 90W fast charging system will be “standard for all systems,” according to the company on Weibo, hinting that there will be more than one first-generation Legion smartphone model. More recently, Lenovo shared a render suggesting the Legion gaming phone has a notch-less display, and they also uploaded a video revealing that there will be a second USB Type-C port on the side so users can charge the phone while they hold the device horizontally.

In fact, here’s what the Lenovo Legion gaming phone will likely look like, based on screenshots we captured from multiple official marketing videos.


The screenshots above are from a promotional video teasing the phone’s ultra-fast 90W wired charging. The floating light particles are from when a race car dissipates, revealing the Lenovo Legion as the “engine.” The streams of light following the phone in the second image end up entering the two USB Type-C charging ports: one on the bottom and another on the side. The caption “90W dual Type-C fast charge, 30 minutes to 100%” can be read at this time, confirming the phone will support this staggeringly fast charging speed. In a separate video, Lenovo reveals that the Legion gaming phone has a 5000mAh dual-cell battery design, which is what makes this ultra-fast charging speed possible. However, it isn’t clear from these videos whether or not you’ll reach the fastest 90W charging speed only when charging from the bottom USB-C port.



Lastly, our source also provided us with a list of some of the specifications for the device. We don’t know everything yet, but we do know enough to say the Lenovo Legion gaming phone is packing top-tier hardware. First of all, the phone’s model name is L79031 and its code-name is “moba,” which likely refers to the multiplayer online battle arena video game genre. The first-generation Legion is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 and will have UFS 3.0 internal storage and LPDDR5 RAM. We don’t know the exact storage or RAM capacities. Next, the Legion should have a 144Hz refresh rate flat display (though we don’t know if it’s LCD or OLED) at FHD+ resolution (2340×1080) and with a 270Hz touch sampling rate. The phone runs Android 10 with Lenovo’s ZUI 12 customizations on top, which Lenovo will likely market as “Legion OS” for this device. Lastly, the phone has dual rear cameras (64MP + 16MP wide-angle) and a single front-facing camera (20MP).
When I first saw these renders, I was skeptical about their accuracy. They seem a bit outlandish when it comes to smartphone design—maybe I’ve fallen victim to another one of Lenovo’s design tricks? Although I’m still not 100% convinced the actual Lenovo Legion will look like the phone in these renders, I am very sure that the videos I obtained are official marketing videos. Lenovo may be exaggerating a bit about the phone’s bezels—as some smartphone companies tend to do in their marketing renders—but the overall design shown here will likely reflect the actual phone’s design.
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