Lenovo gives up on its dream of Android gaming phones

Android makers sometimes try to push this “gaming smartphone” idea. These companies usually try to extend the “PC gamer” design motif to smartphones with RGB LEDs and aggressive marketing. Android games are mostly casual pay-to-win tap fests, so who wants a gaming smartphone? , the answer is clearly “no”.

The site quotes a Lenovo spokesperson as saying:

Lenovo is discontinuing its Android-based Legion mobile gaming phone as part of a broader business transformation and consolidation of its gaming portfolio. As a leader in gaming devices and solutions, Lenovo is not only committed to advancing the gaming category across form factors, but also focused on where we can bring the most value to the global gaming community. .

Gaming phones often seem like products without a market, but the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel 2 was the most extreme version of the idea, so it’s a little sad to see Lenovo packing it up. The phone must have had the most powerful cooling system ever in an Android phone, with two internal cooling fans, copper heat pipes and lots of graphite pads. is not. Most passively cooled Android phones throttle quickly in graphics-intensive games, but this is his one of the rare phones that looks like sustainable cooling. Of course, it did not fit in the usual smartphone body. The center of the device (landscape) was about twice as thick as normal, but a decent product.

Lenovo has packed many other interesting additions into its gaming phones. On the back he had 6 touch sensitive buttons. Four on the top edge of the phone, replicating his L1/R1 L2/R2 design on the console controllers, and two on the back. of the phone for your middle finger. It also had two USB-C ports. One is in its normal location, but blocked for landscape games, so the second port was on the side of the phone, facing down for landscape games. You can charge from either port, or both ports at the same time. Lenovo calls it a 90W “super fast double charge”. The included charger had two USB ports.

Lenovo was right to focus on cooling. Because while PC gaming computers can prove their worth with high-end parts, there are no “better than flagship” parts for smartphones. The Duel 2 was powered by his Snapdragon 888 SoC, the same as all other flagship devices, but at least it was able to run without throttling. Others that exist for PC games but not for Android are: game, or at least a game that inspires enthusiastic hardware purchases. Even if you find a phone that’s faster than normal, few apps can take advantage of it other than emulators.

Listing image by Lenovo