The Legion Duel 2...pretty much the coolest phone I've ever broken....quite literally,
since the cooling system inside is pretty epic. Conveniently it's already been cracked
open a little for us, so the teardown should be rather simple. We've got multiple access
points. And it looks like even the front camera glass got a little damaged during the durability
test. The front Gorilla Glass 5 is still going strong though. Let's get started.
[Intro]
The easiest way to get inside of the Legion Duel 2 is of course with a little heat. And
then bending the phone into a “c” shape with one hand while inserting the razor blade
into the elevated slab of glass on the right joycon. The joycon joke is funny because it's
almost detached. The glass comes up in thirds, and interestingly it does have a little capacitive
pad on the underside as one of the 8 programmable triggers. We'll have to, you know, find them
all like some kind of Pokemon quest. Aside from the whole breaking in half thing, this
phone is legitimately pretty cool.
The other side of the phone opens up in the same way with another thin ribbon connected
to another one of the capacitive programmable triggers. Two down, six to go. The inner third
glass section though is more difficult. It's recessed into the frame with no antenna lines
or easy suction cup access to help lift off the glass. Eventually I do get some penetration
with my razor blade, but it still does...break. I hate it when that happens. The goal here,
of course, is to get access to the internal dual cooling fans and vapor chamber. We get
our first glimpse of the copper air duct system when that glass is removed.
First though, the back glass does have LEDs of its own. It looks like there are 6 of them
that shine into the logo to reflect and refract around inside the white plastic, which of
course causes the glowy effect we see from the outside of the phone. I'll remove three
screws so we have access to the fans and stuff. Now normally I think this is supposed to come
off the phone in one large section, but my phone conveniently is divided into thirds,
which really does make the assembly much easier. The thin slinky looking ribbon is for the
dual ultrasonic triggers in the upper corner. Now we've found four of the eight triggers.
It's a dangerous quest, but you know, someone's gotta do it. I tried removing these ultrasonic
buttons, but they are very much glued into the frame so this is as close as we can get.
Here is the bottom stereo speaker, as well as one of the dual haptic vibration motors.
This same setup is pretty much mirrored on the other side, which we can discover after
removing 4 more screws and taking off that third of the back housing. We once again see
two more ultrasonic corner triggers.
We're now up to 6, along with a dual vibration motor that's still left in the frame. Real
video game controllers have multiple vibrators, so it's cool to see a gaming phone do the
same. It's like a portable console that just happens to make phone calls. The other bottom
loudspeaker is here as well, but there are no balls inside. There are some protections
against water though, like this red rubber gasket and mesh for the microphone opening.
Now it's time to take apart the good stuff.
The center third of this phone is still solidly screwed into place. Some screws have white
arrows pointing to them which definitely facilitates disassembly, but other screws like this one
hidden by the popup camera are entirely invisible at first glance, and more difficult to locate.
Once all the screws are removed, I can unplug the front facing side mounted popup camera
just like a little Lego, and then we get a close up look at the coolest cooling system
of the year. There are indeed two fans inside. The larger one with 29 blades at the bottom
which can suck in air from the back of the phone. Or if the fan is blocked by laying
flat on a table, it can suck in air from the side of the phone and then pull that air through
the copper tubing and out through the top where there is another exhaust fan helping
to escort the air through the vent next to the popup camera. The phone is so complex
it's rather ingenious. To design something that utilizes every millimeter so efficiency
is very impressive.
Once it's out of the rear frame, we can see more clearly the duct work, as well as how
the entire thing is made from copper and completely hollow inside. Lenovo says this system keeps
the Qualcomm 888 processor 30% cooler than other phones that have the same chip and I
believe it. The copper ductwork looks like it's even laser welded shut. There are two
additional copper pillars heading down to the main vapor chamber next to the cameras,
but I'll show you that more in a second. You know the phone is pretty interesting when
the stepper motor for the front popup camera is the most boring thing we have to look at.
The front earpiece speaker has a layer of the largest waterproofing mesh we've ever
seen. I still wouldn't trust the phone to be totally waterresitant, but at least there
is protection. I'll pop off the metal bracket on the stacked motherboard and unclip some
more Lego-style connections along with quite a few signal wires that all head out to those
infamous antenna lines. Not a whole lot else on this board so we'll move onto the dual
batteries – one on either side of the phone.
There are no magic pull tabs this time around, but when they do get pulled out with brute
force, we get a glimpse of the force touch sensor under the display as one of the final
8 trigger locations. There's one on either side and our quest is now complete. Now I'm
usually pretty surprised when companies send me a phone to, you know, review. It's definitely
a brave move since my reviews aren't really considered conventional. This Legion Duel
2 was sent in a retail box with a factory seal, but each of the 2,750 milliamp hour
batteries say “engineering sample” on them. So it does make you wonder if Lenovo
really was ready to show this off. I think the most logical explanation is that I probably
got included on the list of popular YouTubers and just got sent a phone without Lenovo really
checking to see who I am or what I do. And if that is indeed the case, I'd like to say:
Hello, Lenovo. It's nice to meet you. And I hope we didn't start this off on the wrong
foot.
With the motherboard released we can take a look at the 64 megapixel main camera, which
does not have OIS. And then we have the 16 megapixel wide angle camera which also does
not have OIS. We do have a lot of copper and thermal paste on the back though, which brings
us to the vapor chamber. Pay attention to these two little copper posts which connect
the copper air ducts from the cooling fan down to the copper vapor chamber onto the
screen. A lot of planning has gone into this design...well, functional planning...not so
much structural planning. With the screen now separated from the mid plate, we get our
first look at the rather large vapor chamber. And would you look at that. My fingerprint
scanner hypothesis was correct. It does not have a lens, it's just the flat sensor, which
for me usually struggles a bit more reading my fingerprints. I prefer the lens style or
the ultrasonic. Currently, Sony has the record for the largest vapor chamber inside of a
cell phone, but Lenovo is right there as well with the massive chamber all of their own.
It feels a bit more thin than Sony's, so I think Sony's still the leader. But it's still
impressive. Sometimes we can see liquid quickly evaporate from inside the chamber when I cut
it. But even after quickly lifting up the copper flaps, I don't see any liquid this
time around. Here's a closeup look at the copper wicking inside of the vapor chamber
though. This is what helps wick the liquid inside of the chamber. And here is a close
up look at those copper posts that help move the heat from the vapor chamber up to the
copper air ducts so the fan can pull it out and blow it away from the phone. Little conductive
nuggets of calcification. And to nobody's surprise, there are two of them, just like
everything else in the phone.
All in all, I'd say that the Legion Duel 2 is one of the most interesting phones we've
ever seen the insides of. And whether it was on accident or on purpose, I'm glad Lenovo
sent it over. And I'm already looking forward to next year, assuming, of course, we're still
friends. And remember, no matter what phone you have, it should probably be in a case.
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And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.