Lenovo all set to over-deliver with the Legion gaming phone

When Lenovo began teasing its Legion gaming smartphone earlier this year, it hinted that the phone would be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset. Now, back in February, that SoC was the silicon the du jour for flagship Android handsets, but with the recent arrival of the Snapdragon 865 Plus, which offers better performance and gameplay, that’s no longer the case. 

When the Snapdragon 865 Plus was announced, Lenovo was one of the launch partners, with the vice president of the company’s Mobile Gaming Group confirming that a gaming device with the chip will be released this year. Today, the company took to the Chinese social networking website Weibo to reveal that the Lenovo Legion is indeed  that device. It’s really heartening to see that the company is not sticking with a six months old chip, unlike some other vendors who are reportedly planning to release a device with the Snapdragon 855 later this year,

Lenovo Legion all set to become the first Snapdragon 865 Plus powered phone

The post also says that the Lenovo Legion will be unveiled on July 22, some hours before ASUS is expected to announce the gaming-centric ROG Phone 3. The launch event will start at 7:30 AM ET.

No other details were mentioned, but thankfully we have a trove of leaks to fall back upon. The Snapdragon 865 Plus will likely be paired with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and  512GB of UFS 3.0 internal storage. The phone will probably feature a 2340 x 1080 display with a refresh rate of 144Hz and a touch sampling rate of 270Hz for a smoother gaming experience.

The display will apparently be notchless and per leaks, this will be achieved by using a side 20MP pop-up camera. That’s an unusual placement and it seems like Lenovo thinks it will help with live streaming.

The phone is expected to have two USB Type-C ports, presumably to allow you to continue playing your game comfortably while charging the device. Speaking of the battery, the handset is tipped to come with a 5,000mAh dual-cell battery and 90W fast charging tech. There is also a possibility that the phone will instead support 45W wired charging only. 

In the main camera department, a dual-camera setup with 64MP and 16MP sensors are expected and the phone will supposedly have stereo speakers on the top. It will probably ship with Android 10 with Legion OS on top