Game Over: Lenovo Confirms No More Legion Gaming Phones
If you've been holding out for Lenovo to follow up its Legion Phone Duel 2 powerhouse, we're sorry to say that what you have there in your hands marks the end for Lenovo gaming phone products. An announcement by a company spokesperson clearly states that "Lenovo 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."
With this announcement, Lenovo leaves the weakening ranks of Android gaming phones. We haven't seen Razer update its Razer Phone 2 since 2017. Nubia still has its Red Magic 8 Pro, while Xiaomi has its Black Shark phones, but we do not have either here in the US. One of the last true bastions of this niche market is the ASUS ROG. The latest ROG Phone 7 is slated for an April release.
While some are lamenting this slow death of dedicated gaming phones, it is not hard to see why the category has lost a lot of its luster. Gaming phones used to be places where brands showcased and pushed hardware/software to the max, thus allowing users to game hard without compromises. However, things that were once almost unique to gaming phones, like overclocked SoCs, high refresh rate displays, fast RAM/storage, long battery life with fast charging, efficient cooling under load, and gaming tools (like stream recording, overlays, and mode selection) have largely become available on mainstream phones, such as Samsung S23s or even the cheaper OnePlus 11.
