Lenovo Legion Y90 Review – Lenovo Legion Y90 is a gaming-oriented smartphone that was designed with two things in mind and that’s power and user experience and that’s exactly what it delivers. It’s a phone that has made headlines with tags such as higher RAM, RGB, and dual USB slot, among other things. Features such as those certainly attract a lot of attention and it has certainly caught our attention. But the Lenovo Legion Y90 is not the first smartphone in the mobile gaming industry.
Smartphones like the ZTE Nubia Red Magic series, the Xiaomi Black Shark series, Asus ROG phone series, among others have been in the mobile gaming industry for a long time, can Lenovo, a newcomer to the mobile gaming industry beat the other giants and take the top spot? We believe they can. Lenovo is indeed a newcomer in the mobile gaming industry, but they have been building powerful gaming setups for a long time now and their Legion is one of the most popular PC gaming rigs. Let’s find out if Lenovo has managed to design the ultimate mobile gaming smartphone.
Table of Contents
Lenovo Legion Y90 Review
Highlights
- The Lenovo Legion Y90 features 6.92 inches AMOLED display panel with a 144Hz refresh rate support.
- Lenovo Legion Y90 is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset for better gaming performance.
- The smartphone runs on the latest Android 12 OS out of the box and has the ZUI 13 User Interface on top of it.
- The new smartphone features a dual-camera system featuring a 64MP rear camera with a 16MP selfie camera.
- The Li-Po 5600 mAh battery powering the Legion Y90 has a 68W fast charging support.
Design and Display
If there’s a show of gaming smartphones, the Lenovo Legion Y90 will instantly be the star of the show. Gamers love flashy design and RBGs but some companies overdo it and that ruins the experience for a lot of people. Lenovo changes that here and it features a very subtle design. gaming-centric smartphones are expected to have RGBs and so does the Lenovo Legion Y90 but Lenovo’s subtle choice makes it look super elegant and it simply outclasses every other gaming smartphone in the market.
It is only available in grey color and features a smooth and matte glass back with a special module in the middle of the house that houses the camera, RGB logo, and the internal fan grill for the cool air to go in. The legion Y90 features curved edges and sides which should give you a comfortable hold and makes it feel more premium. There are some more grills on the sides of the phone and these grills are responsible for pushing hot air out.
Also, the RGBs designed in a way to better represent gamers, while also being subtle. The RGB LEDs can synchronize with the fan. Lenovo has a dedicated app for the RGB LEDs and you can customize the LED colors to your liking and mood of the day. As for the display, the Lenovo Legion Y90 features a 6.92 inches AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate, and 1300 nits peak brightness besides this, you get HDR10+ support in the phone.
Memory and Internal
The Lenovo Legion Y90 is powered by the latest 4nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and features a dual-fan vapor chamber cooling system to keep your internals cool while you game on the phone. Usually, too much heat causes the processor to trigger a throttling event to save it from overheating. Throttling event manages to cool the smartphone by significantly reducing the clock speed, which reduces the performance of the app or the game you are playing.
With Lenovo’s dual-fan vapor chamber cooling system, there will not be any heating even during peak gaming hours, which will certainly enhance your gaming experience. Also, due to the active cooling system, the Adreno 730 GPU will run at its full potential and will provide much higher FPS for longer periods of time.
Apart from that, the phone offers 12GB to 18GB of RAM coupled with 256GB to 640GB of internal storage. The phone also has secondary storage support in the form of SSD. The phone also has capacitive touch-sensitive shoulder triggers that can mimic the L1, L2, and R1, R2 that you find in gaming controllers. The gaming triggers come in handy when playing games like PUBG and CODm. The smartphone is pre-loaded with the latest Android 12 OS out of the box and has the new ZUI 13 UI.
Camera
The phone has a dual rear camera system, a main 64MP wide sensor, and a 13MP ultra-wide. Both the main cameras are quite good and take some exceptionally good pictures, especially considering the fact that it’s a gaming smartphone and usually they don’t have good cameras. But not the Legion Y90, it takes great pictures with colors that look very true to life.
The dynamic range is close to real life and the color science is on point. The portrait mode pictures are captured perfectly and the edges of the subject look quite natural. The selfie camera is a 16MP sensor that is optimized to take very decent selfies with a good amount of details on the face and the skin tones look natural and well saturated.
Even during the night, the images coming out of the sensors look quite decent. Lenovo Legion Y90 can shoot up to 8K@24FPS while recording videos from the main rear camera, while the selfie sensor can only shoot videos at a maximum of 4K@60FPS. We wish if selfie camera also had an 8K option like the rear camera, but it’s not a camera smartphone, so we can’t get everything.
Battery and Others
The phone has Li-Po 5600 mAh battery and it has support for up to 68W of fast charging, which the company claims can fully charge the smartphone in 38 minutes. It has an under-display optical fingerprint sensor, which is fast, accurate, and responsive. There are two USB-C ports, one at the bottom and the other at the side. The bottom USB-C supports USB 2.0 only, while the side USB-C supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds.
Apart from that, the device also comes with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, Stereo speakers, GPS, and a compass, among other sensors. The phone is only available in China as of now and it starts at $650 (Rs. 51,000 in India) approx.
Lenovo Legion Y90 Pros and Cons
Lenovo Legion Y90 Specifications Detail
Down below you can see the full specifications of the Lenovo Legion Y90 smartphone.
| Specifications | Lenovo Legion Y90 |
| Network | 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G |
| Announced | March 2022 |
| SIM | Dual SIM |
| Dimensions | 6.97 x 3.09 x 0.40 inches |
| Weight | 252 g |
| Size | 6.92 inches |
| Display | AMOLED 144Hz HDR10+ 1300 nits brightness ~388 PPI density |
| Protection/Others | Built-in two cooling fans RGB light panel (on the back) 4 ultrasonic buttons (Gaming triggers) |
| Resolution | 1080 x 2460 pixels |
| OS | Android 12, ZUI 13 |
| Chipset | 4nm – Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 |
| CPU | Octa-core 1×3.00 GHz Cortex-X2 3×2.50 GHz Cortex-A710 4×1.80 GHz Cortex-A510 |
| GPU | Adreno 730 |
| Card slot | No |
| RAM | 12GB, 16GB, 18GB |
| Internal | 256GB, 640GB UFS 3.1 640GB (512GB UFS + 128GB SSD) |
| Camera | 64 MP (wide), PDAF 13 MP (120˚ ultrawide) Dual-LED flash, panorama, HDR Max – 8K@24fps, gyro-EIS, HDR10+ rec. |
| Selfie | 16 MP HDR Max – 4K@30/60fps |
| Loudspeaker | Yes (stereo speakers) |
| 3.5mm jack | No |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot |
| Bluetooth | 5.2, A2DP, LE |
| GPS | Yes, with dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS, QZSS |
| NFC | Yes |
| Infrared port | No |
| Radio | No |
| USB | USB Type-C 3.1 Gen2, USB Type-C 2.0, USB On-The-Go |
| Sensors | Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass |
| Battery | Li-Po 5600 mAh Fast charging 68W |
| Colors | Gray |
| Expected Price | $650 (Rs 51,000 in India) approx. |
Conclusion
If you always wanted a gaming smartphone and that too at an affordable rate, then the Lenovo Legion Y90 smartphone will fulfill all your needs. A lot of people feel gaming smartphone designs can be embarrassing but the Lenovo Legion Y90 features a very elegant design with subtle RGBs in the back and so you won’t be embarrassed when you pull out the phone from your pocket in the public.
Even if you don’t care much about the design, the performance is incredible and will never go down, thanks to the dual-fan vapor cooling system. Even the cameras are just perfect. All in all, it’s the ultimate gaming smartphone and it comes in a package you can’t refuse.
This has some downsides like lack of wireless charging, gorilla glass protection, and average camera performance. In case you are looking for a good camera phone and want an alternative to the Legion Y90 smartphone, take a look at the Oppo Find X5 Pro smartphone.
