Lenovo has killed off its Legion gaming phone division

[midian182]

What just happened? Lenovo's Legion gaming smartphones are no more. The company has confirmed it is discontinuing the group as "part of a wider business transformation and gaming portfolio consolidation," marking another blow for the gaming phone industry.

A Lenovo spokesperson told Android Authority that the company "is discontinuing its Android-based Legion mobile gaming phones as part of a wider business transformation and gaming portfolio consolidation."

"As a leader in gaming devices and solutions, Lenovo is committed to advancing the gaming category across form factors, as well as focusing on where it can bring the most value to the global gaming community."

The Legion smartphones gained a reputation for boasting impressive specs and features. The Legion Phone Duel 2, for example, has a 144Hz refresh rate, up to 18GB of LPDDR5 memory, dual 2750mAh battery packs, and dual active cooling fans. The phone is engineered to be used primarily in landscape mode for gaming.

The last flagship Legion handset Lenovo released, and only in certain markets (not the US), was the Y90 in February last year. It features a pop-up selfie camera and a RAID 0 storage stripe option that combines a 128GB SSD with 512GB of flash. There was also the less-impressive Y70 announced last August.

Lenovo didn't say if its decision will affect Android updates being pushed out to current Legion phones. Hopefully for owners, the company will copy what LG did when it shuttered its phone division by pledging three years of Android updates for the Legion handsets.

Lenovo will now focus on its Moto phone line and other Legion-branded products, including gaming PCs, laptops, and gear.

The announcement is another blow for those invested in the gaming smartphone industry. It comes soon after Xiaomi-backed brand Black Shark laid off most of its employees and failed to pay severance payments, though the company is still making gaming phones.

But the market certainly isn't dead. Brands like Nubia Red Magic and the Asus ROG line are still around. In the case of the latter, the Asus ROG Phone 7 arrives on April 13.

Gaming phones have always been a niche area. Most people who want a handheld gaming device tend to opt for something like the Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch rather than pay for a usually more expensive phone. Don't be surprised if more big players decide to follow Lenovo's lead in the future.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98121-lenovo-has-killed-off-legion-gaming-phones.html

 

[Watzupken]

When a high end phone pretty much performs the same, I don’t see why people will want to buy a “gaming” phone. I can’t recall if Asus was the first one that came out with this, but I do wonder how popular they are to begin with.

 

[kira setsu]

A gaming phone seems dumb imo, once youre shopping in high end expensive flagships they all pretty much are the same.

and if youre gaming on a phone why not buy a fold and have a big ol screen and more hand/finger area anyway?

 

[Avro Arrow]

Gaming phones.... That's a real thing? OMFG!

 

[Nobina]

Gaming phone = a regular phone with a fan or some rgb on it.

 

[psycros]

Meanwhile, Lenovo fans are still asking for a mid-range, WUXGA gaming laptop with a numpad. How hard is it to put a decent GPU in a Thinkpad these days? That's what their old gaming laptops were.

 

[Kam7r]

Now the N-gage is not alone anymore in hell xp

 

[Axeia]

I'm somewhat surprised by this news, I thought that in China these phones were doing fairly well.
There's definitely something to be said for a smartphone with above average cooling when it comes to gaming. All the latest flagships run fast and hot and then throttle.. and throttle and throttle until the performance is less than stellar.

Then again if I were to come up with a solution for mobile gamers it' would just be a a gamepad with a fan pointed at the phone. Touch input is awful anyway and a bit of airflow can work wonders.

You won't see me playing mobile games though, I've tried more than once and the combination of crap games and having to use a touchscreen makes for a crap experience.

 

[KofeViR]

Gaming phones.... That's a real thing? OMFG!

You might be laughing, but the mobile gaming market is huge (mostly parents being milked)

 

[Avro Arrow]

You might be laughing, but the mobile gaming market is huge (mostly parents being milked)

Well that's exactly what I was laughing at. The kinds of games that could be put on phones would be far too simple for adult gamers to appreciate. Most of the games on my phone are trivia games or flag identification games. I do have a couple of Star Wars flight simulators which are pretty cool (X-Wing Flight and Dark Side) but that's pretty much it.

I couldn't imagine trying to play an advanced game (like an RPG) on a phone. Just the idea of it strikes me as insane. Touchscreens are (let's face it) really crappy input devices for anything but the simplest of tasks (for which they're just fine). There's a reason why Bluetooth keyboards and mice are available for tablets.