Back when Lenovo announced that it was pulling the plug on Legion smartphones, it seemed like the end of the road for the brand’s mobile ambitions. Meanwhile, the Legion name continues on laptops, tablets, and handheld consoles. Four years later, the gaming-centric brand has stormed back into the phone business with the new-generation Legion Y70. And no, this is not some old stock dug out from a warehouse. This is a proper comeback.
At first glance, the new Legion Y70 does not scream “gaming phone” the way the old Legion Duel series did. There are no RGB light shows or side-mounted pop-up cameras. There’s no active fan, either, like so many gaming phones have these days (though I suspect it is only a matter of time before one appears). Lenovo decided that perhaps a phone can harbor immense gaming power while still looking perfectly appropriate at a black-tie event.
Front and center is a 144 Hz 6.82-inch 2K esports/gaming display with a whopping 7,000 nits brightness. Under the hood sits Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, paired with an Adreno 829 GPU, LPDDR5X Ultra memory, and UFS 4.1 storage. Lenovo also threw in a 7,000 mm² vapor chamber and a whopping 24,000 mm² cooling system because, apparently, overheating is for lesser mortals.
The battery situation is equally absurd. The Legion Y70 packs an 8,000 mAh battery. Yes, eight thousand. The company claims up to 23 hours of continuous video playback and more than 100 hours of music playback. When it finally runs low, 68 W fast charging gets it back into action.
Speaking of charging, it supports bypass charging. What this means the charger supplies power directly to the motherboard (or PMIC), while the battery is either not charged or charged minimally. Since the battery isn’t being stressed, temperatures stay lower.
Camera duties are handled by a 50 MP main camera featuring Sony LYT-710 1/1.56” large sensor with OIS (f1/.8, PDAF), accompanied by an 8 MP 1/4” large sensor ultra-wide (118.6°) camera that also does 2.5 cm macro camera. This camera boasts f/2.2 aperture, and AF). Rounding up the rear camera setup is a 2-in-1 sensor that prevents overexposure and reduces flicker, along with a portrait flash with smart soft illumination. Up front is a 32 MP camera (f/2.2, 88° wide angle) for selfies and video calls.
Interestingly, it is also kind of a rugged phone. The Lenovo Legion Y70 New-Generation is IP66 + IP68 + IP69 rated for dust and water resistance—in addition to extreme temperature operation (-20°C to 60°C), 4,572 meters high altitude/low pressure certified, and tested to withstand a drop from 1.8 meters, at multiple angles (26, to be precise).
Other goodies include dual stereo speakers, Dolby Atmos, esports Wi-Fi antenna, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, an in-display fingerprint reader, 500 Hz gyroscope sampling rate, and Lenovo’s ZUXOS based on Android. Did we also mention that it is a monster SIM phone? It supports dual SIM card—pluys dual e-SIMs, making it a quad SIM device.
Whether this marks the return of Legion phones for good or just a surprise encore remains to be seen. Either way, the Legion Y70 has certainly returned from the dead with a battery large enough to outlast the apocalypse—well, at least the game’s.
What’s even more ridiculous that it is back with a vengence in the pricing department. The new Lenovo Legion Y70 New-Generation starts at just 3,099 yuan [CH], which is about US$458. It is offered in 12 GB + 256 GB, 12 GB + 512 GB, 16 GB + 512 GB, and 16 GB + 1 TB configurations, and in a choice of carbon black and ice white.
Images: Lenovo [CH].