Itel City 200 Full Review: The Budget Phone That Refuses to Compromise

Screen Size and Fluidity

The 6.78-inch panel is genuinely large. At this size, media consumption, reading, and navigation become much more comfortable than on a compact 6.1-inch screen. Content has room to breathe.

The 120Hz refresh rate has tangible everyday impact. Scrolling through social feeds, swiping between apps, and navigating menus all feel noticeably more fluid compared to a standard 60Hz display. Once you have used a 120Hz screen, returning to 60Hz feels like watching a film with dropped frames. Finding this refresh rate on a budget phone is a genuine win.

Where the Display Makes Trade-Offs

The resolution is HD+ — 720 pixels across the width, producing 256 pixels per inch on this large panel. That falls below the Full HD standard (roughly 400+ ppi) used by more expensive phones. Up close, text edges and fine detail are softer. For standard social media, messaging, and streaming, most users will not be bothered. If you read dense text for long periods or view photos at full zoom, the difference becomes perceptible.

The IPS LCD panel delivers accurate colours and wide viewing angles — sharing your screen with someone beside you will not cause colour washout. However, blacks appear dark grey rather than true black, and there is no HDR10 or Dolby Vision support. There is no always-on display and no branded damage-resistant glass. A screen protector is a sensible first purchase.

Main Camera

The 50-megapixel main sensor gives the City 200 a meaningful resolution advantage over older budget phones with 12–13MP sensors. More megapixels allow the camera to apply pixel-binning — combining adjacent pixels — to produce cleaner shots in lower light while retaining detail in bright conditions.

Phase-detection autofocus (PDAF) enables fast, accurate focus on moving subjects — a child running, a pet, a quick street scene — where slower contrast-detect systems often produce blurry results. Manual controls are unusually generous for this price: adjustable ISO, exposure compensation, white balance, and manual focus all feature here, giving photography enthusiasts creative latitude beyond what budget phones typically offer. Burst mode, HDR, panorama, and continuous autofocus during video recording round out the feature set.

What is absent: optical image stabilisation (OIS). Without OIS, handheld shots in lower light or while moving are more prone to blur from camera shake. The sensor also lacks a back-illuminated (BSI) design, meaning low-light photography is this camera's softer ground. Outdoor daytime shots are where this camera works best. Video records at 1080p at 30 frames per second — standard and perfectly serviceable for everyday content.

Front Camera

The 8-megapixel front camera handles video calls and selfies competently. There is no front-facing flash, so shots in dark environments rely on screen brightness as a fill light — a common limitation at this price level.

Running Android 15, the City 200 ships with a current, modern operating system. Newer Android versions bring security patches, performance refinements, and features that older builds lack — shipping on Android 15 at this price point sets the City 200 ahead of competitors still bundling Android 13 or 14.

The software includes a meaningful privacy toolkit: clipboard access warnings alert you when apps read your clipboard, camera and microphone access controls let you manage app permissions precisely, and app tracking blockers limit how much data advertisers can gather. These are real protections against the data-collection practices common in free apps — not just checkbox features.

One caveat worth noting: direct OS updates through the standard vendor channel are not confirmed, meaning long-term major Android version upgrades depend on Itel's own update programme — a common limitation at this price tier. Security patch delivery is the more pressing ongoing concern for most users.