Leaks reveal Lenovo’s plans to make Android gaming handheld

Even though MWC 2021 happened months ago in the summer, new leaks have revealed a device that looks like Lenovo’s attempt to build its own Android-based portable gaming handheld.

Although the Lenovo Legion Play has never been officially announced, Brad Linder from Liliputing recently discovered source code hidden in Lenovo Germany and Lenovo Japan MWC 2021 news sites with images and description of Lenovo’s potential handheld.

According to the leaked files, the description of Legion Play says:

“Designed for AAA games, the Lenovo Legion Play is the first Android cloud gaming console. The console allows users to play hundreds of cloud games, stream their game library, or play mobile games. It has a bezel-less 7 ″ 16: 9 FHD display, HDR 10, built-in controllers, dual speakers, dual vibration and 7,000mAh battery to provide the best gaming experience. Our development program is open to all game developers. Coming soon in some markets.

Compared to the new Nintendo OLED Switch, the Legion Play would have a similar 7-inch screen but with a denser resolution of 1920 x 1080, but without the more vivid colors of the OLED switch or the ability to detach its controllers from the side of the device. The Legion Play also features a button layout familiar to other gaming handhelds with the device featuring two analog sticks, a d-pad on the left, a face button grip on the right, and several shoulder buttons at the top.

In the photos, the Legion Play looks like a slimmer, more compact version of Valve Steam Bridge, however, instead of running a custom version of Linux, Legion Play would be based on Android. If this is true, it would position Legion Play as having a somewhat different use case than Steam Deck, because instead of running AAA games locally on the device, Legion Play would be better suited for playing games. mobile games downloaded from the Google Play Store, emulated games, and titles from cloud gaming services such as Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Currently it is not clear if Legion Play supports cellular connectivity or if it is limited to wifi only, but in either case I think Legion Play should be a little cheaper than the price of $ 400 departure from the Steam Deck, lest it end up in an increasingly crowded marketplace between the Steam Deck, all the different versions of the Nintendo Switch, and other upcoming devices like Qualcomm’s rumored gaming handheld.

Either way, with the success of the Switch and the large numbers of reservations for the Steam Deck, it looks like the floodgates for future Android or PC gaming handhelds are about to be wide open. Sadly, it doesn’t look like there is an official date or timeline for Legion Play’s release, so hopefully we’ll hear more of that before the end of the year.

And in case a gaming handheld isn’t enough, it looks like Lenovo’s press sites also have a handful of files on a somewhat wacky gaming phone called the Lenovo Legion Phone Duel H20 Edition, which like you might have guessed it, contains some kind of water cooling component to help ensure that excess heat does not affect the performance of the device.

Lenovo’s description says:

The Lenovo Legion Phone Duel H2O Edition is a water-cooled concept from the Legion Duel 2. The addition of the active Twin Turbo-Fan was already a bold move, but bringing water cooling to a mobile phone is the perfect solution to dispel heat and improve the stability of the device in high performance mode. Equipped with the latest processor, this phone is perfectly capable of staying cool and extracting the best performance available. To make it an epic gaming phone, we also have Maximized other specifications, it comes with 18 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. This product is still in the concept phase.

And while Liliputing seems to think this concept is too wild for Lenovo to ever turn into reality, with Lenovo has already released a gaming phone with two cooling fans and a side selfie camera earlier this year I honestly wouldn’t surprised if a water-cooled phone from Lenovo appeared next year (or maybe even sooner).