Lenovo Legion Phone: there’s a new gaming smartphone on the horizon

The Chinese manufacturer could backtrack and launch a new Lenovo Legion Phone. A mysterious gaming smartphone was spotted at an event and does not correspond to any model released so far on the market. Gaming phones are about to enter a new golden era? Perhaps yes, but aiming for a less divisive aesthetic.

Lenovo Legion Phone could return: paparazzi shots reveal a gaming smartphone never seen before

Between 2020 and 2022 Lenovo dedicated itself to gaming smartphones, with results also interesting. Lenovo Legion Duel and Duel 2 were devices with an atypical look that proposed a new format for the mobile category.

An aggressive and futuristic design, characterized by a pop-up camera, an integrated fan and a LED lighting system. In short, the whole gaming-phone style package but concentrated in the central area of the back. In this way the two ends of the phone were left completely empty, for maximum comfort when using it in landscape mode.

The experiments continued with Legion Y90 while the Y70 — the brand’s latest smartphone — debuted with a design that is more sober and slim than its predecessors. In the end Lenovo’s gaming-phone division closed its doors and the brand chose to focus on other, more vibrant segments — such as PCs and portable devices.

However the photo seen in this article has rekindled hopes: during an event in China a company representative was photographed holding an unreleased Lenovo Legion smartphone. The phone features a triple camera with LED flash, all positioned inside a squared module with rounded corners (almost Squircle).

The Legion logo is visible on the back, unmistakable even if partly obscured by the hand holding the device. The design is certainly much more sober than what we are used to from Lenovo, however it could be a step forward toward a new generation of gaming phones.

The sober aesthetic approach is now preferred by almost all major Chinese brands, which use gaming features and specs but without the typical excesses of the category — resulting in them being less niche (we discussed this on the occasion of rumors about the return of Black Shark). Meanwhile REDMAGIC does not yield and continues to offer phones with a futuristic flavor but others did not make it (such as the ASUS ROG phones).