As a follow-up to its successful S100 series, the Doogee S200 has improved on its predecessor in almost every conceivable way. It includes a larger screen, a more powerful SoC, improved camera sensors, and supports reverse charging. This phone also supports 5G connectivity for those with that service, whereas the S100 and S100 Pro only offer 4G. All the new parts are shoehorned into an aircraft-grade aluminum chassis rated for IP68, IP69K, and MIL-STD-810H, allowing the S200 to survive being dropped even into a puddle.
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For those considering a beach or adventure holiday, the S200 combines rugged survivability and functionality with a price that won’t break the bank.
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Doogee S200
A new MediaTek Dimensity 7050 SoC delivers more power than previous Doogee flagship designs, blessing the S200 with unprecedented performance and features. Including an OLED rear display and 5G on an Android 14 phone would typically increase the price significantly, but not here.
- Excellent Performance
- Two-day battery life
- IP68/IP69K waterproof, dustproof, and drop-resistant
- OLED rear display
- 5G capable
- Phone camera placement
- Memory size oversell
- Limited 5G support in US
Price and availability
Amazing price for a full-featured design
The cheapest place to buy the S200 is via AliExpress, where the 12GB+256GB model can be found for a couple of cents more than $200 for the silver and gray options. For an additional $37, a 512GB storage model is also available, and those models come in black, yellow, and green.
The cost on Amazon is nearly double that of AliExpress, at $340 after a $90 coupon. But you will get the phone much quicker, and it’s easier to return if you have an issue.
As a Chinese-made global phone design, it was not specifically made for the American market. Therefore, it doesn’t support all the bands that American mobile service providers use, specifically 5G bands. It works with most on 4G, but only on T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Lycamobile are connections to 5G services possible, and only on limited bands.
Specifications
- SoC
- MediaTek Dimensity 7050
- Display type
- IPS
- Display dimensions
- 6.72-inch
- Display resolution
- 2400 x 1080
- RAM
- 12GB
- Storage
- 256GB/512GB
- Battery
- 10100mAh
- Charge speed
- 33W
- SIM support
- Dual Nano SIM
- Operating System
- Android 14
- Rear camera
- 100MP
- Cellular connectivity
- 5G
- Wi-Fi connectivity
- WiFi 6
- Bluetooth
- Yes
What’s good about the Doogee S200?
A strong all-rounder
It’s easy but tedious to call out specific features on the S200 in a whack-a-mole fashion and say if they make this a good or bad design. As with most Doogee hardware I’ve seen, this is a competently engineered device that mostly does what the makers claim. Being a large phone with a metal chassis makes it ideal for those with larger hands and pockets to carry it, although compared to many rugged designs, at 368g, it isn’t cumbersome.
Doogee quotes IP68, IP69K, and MIL-STD-810H as robustness credentials, which translates into being able to withstand being dropped from 6ft, submerged for up to 30 minutes in nearly 5ft of water, or blasted with jets of hot water. However, its dust and waterproofing will only work if you properly secure the rubber plug over the USB-C port.
Like many current Android designs, Doogee included a user-customizable key to launch apps, configure the hardware, or capture the screen. The S200 offers a powerful platform but a mostly vanilla Android installation that hasn’t ditched Google apps for inferior solutions. It has some special functions, like a Game Mode that stops you from being interrupted by incoming calls, an Easy Launcher, an FM Radio, and a toolbag suite. The aim seems to be to stay on the pure Android path for those who like easy transitions from similar phones.
The S200’s gaming performance is better than that of most rugged phones, but it does not achieve the extreme speeds and detail we’ve seen on the latest flagship Samsung S24 and Google Pixel 9 devices. Running a demanding title like Genshin Impact requires using the lowest quality settings to achieve 30fps, but it’s playable. A title like Pokémon Go can easily run, and anything less demanding is fluid on the 120Hz refresh 6.72-inch screen.
However, the screen has a glossy finish, which would be an issue for gaming on the beach without an anti-reflection screen protector. A feature not expected on a budget device is an OLED display, and sadly, the one on here is relegated to being on the back, not the front. Designed to look like a SmartWatch, it was embedded into the S200, displaying a massive selection of clock faces and short messages or the names of music tracks.
The rear display might seem like a gimmick, but placing the phone face down and seeing the time is pleasing. Battery life is good with a 10100mAh battery and the ability to reverse charge to another phone, should you want to use it as a power bank.
What’s bad about the Doogee S200?
Some overselling by Doogee
Have you ever interviewed someone who is clearly suitable for the job but delivers an implausible assessment of their capabilities? The Doogee S200 is that person, as it takes good features and over-emphasizes them.
A sticker on the box states 256GB in the largest font, 32GB in a smaller one, and then, in microscopically small letters, 12GB+20GB RAM.
The S200 has 12GB of RAM, and compared to many phones, that’s plenty. The 12GB+20GB deal is when some 256GB of storage is mapped into the RAM address space to make Android think it has more capacity to install applications. This trick works, to a degree, but it doesn’t give the S200 a capacity of 32GB of RAM, being wholly realistic.
Another distraction is the curious logo on the phone’s rear inside an edged box on the lower back. Initially, I interpreted this as wireless charging, with the box revealing where to place the phone to charge. I’m not sure if this was the original intention of Doogee engineers, but the S200 doesn’t have wireless charging, and this logo and area appear to designate nothing.
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People will either love or hate this phone’s styling. I’d hoped that we’d moved beyond the era when rugged phones were made to look like military gadgets or science fiction cosplay, but the S200 still has a muted vibe of the latter. While it’s not awful, it lacks the elegance of the Samsung and Motorola rugged designs.
The cameras are a mixed bag, with the 100MP main sensor, which can take exceptional images in most lighting conditions and capture 4K video. However, it has no manual adjustment for frame rates other than a slow motion option that drops the resolution to 720p to achieve 120fps. The problem is that the other two sensors are exclusively for night vision and macro photography, leaving the 100MP camera to do all the heavy lifting. If it had optical stabilization and not only digital, the primary camera might have worked better in this context.
One curiosity is that Doogee promotes the S200 as having an underwater camera mode and launching this function can even be bound to the custom button. But the camera never appears, and if you have the standard camera application open, it complains that the underwater camera can’t work while running. This feature might need an update to fix, though using this phone to take underwater photos when it can’t descend more than 5ft underwater seems excessively risky.
I also need to mention that Doogee, like many Chinese phone brands, offers limited upgrades over the perceived life of its devices. Typically, expect the S200 to see some security updates, but I don’t think this phone will ever get Android 15. One last minor point is that it doesn’t have a headphone jack, and it doesn’t come with a USB-C to headphone adapter.
Should you buy it?
Many great features
Considering the price, it feels uncharitable to mention that it lacks wireless charging and only comes with 12GB of RAM. Those limitations aside, the performance of the S200 goes way beyond what any rugged phone offered only a couple of years ago. The similarities between this design and the much more expensive Doogee DK10 are striking. The 100MP primary camera sensor isn’t the best available, but it can still take reasonable photographs across a wide range of lighting conditions, including night, and has a good selection of shooting modes.
Unless you want top-quality captures, the S200 could be the perfect rugged phone to take on holiday or onto a construction site. With 5G comms, dual Nano SIMs, and abuse-resistant construction that can take the knocks and keep working, there are many scenarios where this would be a better choice than endangering an expensive premium device. The usefulness of the rear OLED display is tempered by it moving the cameras away from the centerline, but maybe with long-term use, even that might grow on me. Overall, the Doogee S200 ticks plenty of boxes, probably more than you should reasonably expect at this price.
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Doogee S200
A new MediaTek Dimensity 7050 SoC delivers more power than previous Doogee flagship designs, blessing the S200 with unprecedented performance and features. Including an OLED rear display and 5G on an Android 14 phone would typically increase the price significantly, but not here.
