Ai+ Pulse 2 FE review: a budget 4G phone with good cameras

• By Dhruv Joshi
Published On: 16 October 2026 | 16:42 IST

Smartphone prices are rising, making it harder to find a reliable phone on a tight budget. Buyers now have to look more carefully to find a device that handles everyday tasks well without costing too much. The AI+ Pulse 2 FE is an entry-level 4G phone that aims to offer just that, with a starting price of Rs 9,999 for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage variant and Android 16 out of the box. I’ve been using the phone for some time now, and here’s how it measures up to its promises.

Short verdict

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE is a decent budget 4G smartphone with a good design, a smooth 120Hz display and surprisingly capable cameras for its price. However, sluggish performance, average battery life, and no confirmed software update policy hold it back. At Rs 9,999, it is worth considering if camera performance and design are your priorities, but some similarly priced rivals offer a more well-rounded experience.

Design: comfortable, likeable aesthetics

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE has a simple slab design with a plastic rear panel and a glossy finish that is prone to smudges. The blue colour variant I received for review has a sparkling finish that catches the light at certain angles, giving it a bit more character. The camera island is also well designed, and the phone looks pretty decent for a budget device.

It weighs just 191 grams and feels well balanced in hand, making it comfortable to hold. Up front, you get a punch-hole display with a prominent bottom chin, and the bezels are fairly typical for a phone in this price range, and I have no complaints here.

For the price, the AI+ Pulse 2 FE offers a decent design, a comfortable in-hand feel and an IP64 rating for dust and water resistance. You also get a clear TPU case in-box to safeguard it against falls and other cosmetic damage, which is another thing I appreciate. All in all, I’m quite satisfied with what it offers in this aspect.

Display and audio: surprisingly good experience

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE has a fairly typical budget 6.67-inch LCD display with an HD+ resolution (720 x 1600), but I’m happy to see a 120Hz refresh rate at this price. It makes scrolling and everyday use feel smoother, which is something you appreciate when using the phone throughout the day.

The display works well enough for everyday use, and the colours look decent. I’d recommend switching to Vivid mode in the display’s colour settings for a more pleasing visual experience. The panel offers 500 nits of brightness, which is great for indoor use. The screen, however, is barely visible outdoors, even on cloudy days, so keep that compromise in mind.

You can play YouTube videos at up to 2160p, although this introduces stuttering, and there’s not a significant visual upgrade to justify using it. Playback at 1440p works just fine, which was a pleasant surprise for a phone in this price range.

Another handy feature is background playback, accessible through the sidebar at the top-right of the screen. It lets you play YouTube audio in the background without a Premium subscription, which is useful if you mainly use the platform to listen to music. The feature plays audio without opening a floating video window, so you can only listen while using other apps.

The mono speaker provides reasonably clear audio at 40-70 per cent volume levels, but the output becomes fuzzy and harsh when pushed to 90-100 per cent. Stereo speakers would have been nice, but their absence is understandable at this price. You still get a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom, to be fair, which is great for listening through wired earphones.

Despite its limitations, the display is still quite decent for the price, so kudos to Ai+ for getting one of the most important parts of the everyday smartphone experience right.

Performance and software: good enough for the price

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE’s biggest compromise is, namely, its performance. It runs on the 12nm MediaTek Helio G81 chipset, paired with 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB of internal storage, expandable via MicroSD card. These are modest specifications by today’s standards, but they help keep the phone’s price in check.

Day-to-day use is mostly manageable, but the phone feels sluggish compared to some of its rivals. Apps can take a while to open or switch between tasks, and you can notice lag. The Boltt Evo (review), another budget 4G phone, for instance, feels swifter due to its 6GB of RAM and more capable Unisoc chipset, making everyday use feel smoother.

Does that make the AI+ Pulse 2 FE a bad phone? Not necessarily so. It’s a reasonable trade-off for a device at this price, and it still handles most basic tasks well enough. You can even run demanding games such as BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile, but expect frame rates below 30 FPS even at the lowest graphics settings. This makes them playable, but not particularly enjoyable if you’re looking for a smooth gaming experience.

The phone heats up moderately during extended gaming sessions, with temperatures rising by around 4-4.5 degrees Celsius over 40 minutes. This is reasonable for an entry-level device, although performance does dip over time. Basic games such as Hay Day and Beach Buggy Racing run much better, with only occasional stutters.

Overall, the AI+ Pulse 2 FE offers enough power for everyday essentials and casual gaming, but its limited RAM and modest chipset make it less suitable for heavy multitasking or demanding games. These are understandable compromises at this price, provided you know what to expect.

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE runs Android 16 with AI+’s NxtQ 1.0 skin. The interface is fairly clean, and there are no third-party apps pre-installed, which is good to see. You also get a useful Privacy Dashboard widget that shows which apps have accessed sensitive permissions, along with Google Gemini and basic AI photo editing tools in Google Photos. However, there isn’t much here that sets the phone apart from other Android devices.

The software could also use some polishing, as certain parts of the interface feel less refined than those on other Android phones. More importantly, AI+ has not shared how long it plans to provide software updates for the Pulse 2 FE. This makes it difficult to judge how well the phone will hold up over the next few years.

Cameras: surprisingly capable

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE features a 50MP primary rear camera with autofocus, HDR support and a single-tone LED flash. The camera app can feel a bit laggy, though, and may take a second or two to switch between different shooting modes.

I had my expectations in check, but the camera has positively surprised me with its results. Regular daylight shots capture decent detail, with pleasing colours and contrast. Exposure can sometimes be off, but manually adjusting it can often help produce better results.

Portrait mode is less impressive, as the background blur can be too aggressive, and the camera struggles to capture fine details. You can occasionally get good results, but it takes some tweaking. The 8MP selfie camera was a pleasant surprise, delivering good-looking selfies that are more than good enough for social media.

Low-light photography is a trickier affair, since even the dedicated Night mode can struggle when there isn’t much light around. However, with decent lighting, the camera can produce satisfactory results. There’s also a dedicated Pro mode, which should be useful for those who know their way around camera settings and want more control over their shots.

Overall, the AI+ Pulse 2 FE offers a basic but usable camera experience. It won’t get everything right, especially in challenging lighting, but it’s one of the better budget camera performers at this price point.

For more context, I compared its cameras against the Boltt Evo (review). Check it out below.

Daylight

The Pulse 2 FE’s regular shots look quite appealing at first glance. Compared to the Boltt Evo, the former’s image has better colour balance that’s closer to the actual scene and holds more details. The Evo’s image has a green hue, and its details get smudged once you zoom in closer, while the Pulse manages to retain the sharpness and finer details better.

Ai+ Pulse 2 FE

Boltt Evo

Portrait

In portrait shots, the differences between both phones largely come down to how well they isolate their subject and detail level. The Pulse still renders better colours and skintone, while the Evo’s output looks overexposed.

Ai+ Pulse 2 FE

Boltt Evo

The former’s image manages to isolate the subject from the background better and also retains a better detail level. The Evo’s shot has trouble with edge detection, and the subject’s details appear blurry once you zoom in closer.

Selfie

When it comes to selfies, the playing ground is more even for both. The colour output is still similar to previous categories, and Pusle maintains its lead. But when it comes to details and sharpness, the images from both phones are quite closely matched.

Ai+ Pulse 2 FE

Boltt Evo

Zooming in on the images at around 60 per cent is where the Pulse takes a definitive lead, with better facial details and sharpness compared to the Evo.

Lowlight

In lowlight, with night mode enabled on both phones, the results are obvious at first glance. The Pulse 2 FE maintains a sharper, more detailed image compared to the Boltt Evo. In terms of colour, the Pulse captures the scene more like the real world, while the Evo’s shot looks hazy and overexposed.

Ai+ Pulse 2 FE

Boltt Evo

Battery: reliable, but slow to charge

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE packs a 5,000mAh battery with support for 18W charging. A compatible charger is included in the box, which is good to see, but it’s rated at 10W. We’ll come back to this later.

The phone failed to complete our PCMark battery test, making it difficult to compare its endurance with that of its rivals. Instead, we’ll have to rely on our day-to-day experience and the battery drain we observed across different use cases.

Streaming YouTube videos for 60 minutes at 80 per cent brightness drained 6 per cent of the battery, while around 1.5 hours of gaming resulted in a 22 per cent drop. These results aren’t very reassuring, but they’re mostly in line with the rest of the segment. Even phones with larger 6,000mAh batteries, such as the Boltt Evo and itel Zeno 200, don’t offer a significant advantage, with the latter performing only marginally better.

Based on our usage, you can expect around six hours of screen-on time with mixed usage, dropping to roughly five hours if you keep 4G enabled throughout the day. That’s neither particularly good nor bad for a phone with a 5,000mAh battery. Lowering screen brightness and using Wi-Fi when possible should help you squeeze more time out of it. You should, however, expect to charge the phone by the end of the day.

Charging is another area where the experience depends on the adapter you use. With the in-box 10W charger, the phone took a little over 90 minutes to charge fully. My personal PD charger dropped the full charging time to about 80 minutes, but we can’t include that since it’s not part of the actual package. This makes overnight charging a necessity, or you’ll need to plan ahead and top up the battery before heading out.

Final Verdict

The AI+ Pulse 2 FE is a decent budget 4G smartphone, especially if camera performance and design are high on your list of priorities. At Rs 9,999 for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage variant, it delivers better camera results than I expected for the price, plus a 120Hz display and a comfortable design. However, its modest performance and average battery life hold it back.

The Boltt Evo (review) is a good alternative, offering 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, smoother everyday performance and a larger 6,000mAh battery. Its cameras, however, are substantially worse performers in comparison. The itel Zeno 200 (review) is an even tougher rival, with better performance, comparable camers, higher dedicated storage, and a more refined software package at the same price. It also comes with a year of security updates, while Boltt Evo offers up to 3 years of Android upgrades.

The biggest concern with the AI+ Pulse 2 FE is the lack of a clear software update commitment, which makes it harder to recommend for long-term use. Ultimately, the choice comes down to whether you value camera performance over raw performance and battery life. If you want a budget phone that takes decent photos and looks good, the Pulse 2 FE is worth considering.

Editor’s Rating: 7.9/10

Reasons to buy:

• The phone has a likeable, comfortable design with IP64 rating
• The rear and front cameras both capture good results for the price
• The 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling feel smoother
• You get Android 16 out of the box

Reasons not to buy:

• The performance feels underwhelming compared to rivals
• The in-box 10W charger takes a long time to top up the phone
• There’s no clear future software update commitment