Lenovo leaves behind a market niche Samsung isn’t rushing to fill

It’s a sad day for fans of smartphones dedicated to mobile gaming, as one of the very few OEMs that build mobile gaming phones, Lenovo, is leaving this market segment. The Legion gaming business is officially shutting down, leaving behind a slot that Samsung doesn’t seem to be in a rush to fill, perhaps for good reasons.

Lenovo’s Legion line of gaming phones is retreating. After an alleged Lenovo employee claimed to have it on good authority that the company is shutting down its Legion smartphone business, a spokesperson confirmed (via Android Authority) that this is indeed the case. Lenovo Legion is no more.

Are dedicated gaming phones worth it? Should Samsung make one?

Although Samsung has experimented with various smartphone designs in the past — the most remembered of which is probably the “cameraphone” — the company never really created a dedicated gaming phone. You know, the kind of device that features laptop-like cooling with miniature fans, dedicated shoulder buttons, or the optional RGB elements that scream “gaming.” And there might be a good reason for that. And it’s the same reason why Legion gaming phones are going away.

Lenovo didn’t abandon this market niche and left behind a gold mine. The gaming phone market fills a relatively narrow niche, and most mobile gamers seem to prefer buying a regular high-end smartphone they can also use for gaming rather than going all-in on dedicated mobile gaming hardware. Xiaomi’s gaming line is also facing difficulties, and the few hardcore mobile gamers looking for a dedicated gaming smartphone seem to gravitate more toward the ASUS ROG Phone series.

Samsung seems to understand that this market’s potential is limited. It’s likely why it strived to improve performance on the Galaxy S23 flagship series rather than dividing its phone lineup between standard and gaming phones. In partnership with Qualcomm, Samsung gave the S23 series an overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset with bigger vapor chambers. The company is also working on a new version of its Game Launcher.

Nevertheless, with Lenovo Legion now gone, it would be interesting to see Samsung’s vision of a true gaming phone coming to life. Maybe it could even boast the Gaming Hub platform for cloud gaming. And with Qualcomm’s help and Samsung’s recent efforts to bring ray tracing to mobile games and engines, who knows what beast of a phone the tech giant could’ve produced? But will we ever see such a device? The market’s potential hints at a strong “no.”