AI+ is entering the Indian smartphone market and the company is making notable claims about user privacy where it says that the users’ data will be stored on MeitY approved Google Cloud servers in India itself. Aside from that, its two new launches include the AI+ Pulse and the AI+ Nova 5G and we are here to review the former, which starts at Rs 6,999 in the country. Is it worth its affordable price tag? Let’s find out.
Design & Display
The AI+ smartphone is made of plastic all-around which is given considering the price tag but sports an interesting design. While there’s mostly matte finish, the back panel has three glossy stripes along with a pentagon-shaped camera module. The module has two cutouts of different shapes to house the sensors.
The AI+ branding resides in the middle. The right spine has all the buttons with the power button coloured in red which gives it a unique look. The power button also acts as a fingerprint sensor whose performance is decent. It doesn’t always unlock the phone in one go, however, when it does, it’s quick.
The flat sides account for a decent grip in the hand, even though the device is on the bigger side.
At the bottom there’s a speaker, an audio jack, and a USB-C port for charging. The device has this one single speaker which sounds below average, even for this price. It sounds tinny and also isn’t loud enough which is a basic necessity so you can hear the phone ringing.
Speaking of the display, it is a 6.75-inch 90Hz display with a 1600 x 720 pixels Resolution and frankly, this is a panel that’s not up to the mark. It gets this excessive cool hue which makes everything look blue and also puts a good amount of strain on your eyes if you read for a long time. It is also not quite responsive while brightness is also poor outdoors, resulting in poor readability. Because it is a big panel, 720p resolution just makes the text look less sharper which again offers a bad experience for readability.
Software & Performance
The AI+ Pulse packs a Unisoc T615 Chipset paired with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. We mostly see brands offer 4GB RAM and 64GB storage in this segment so that’s a plus point for the AI+ Pulse. However, the performance seems to be on the negative side so far. I can easily notice lag and unresponsiveness to the touch in daily use. The animations skip frame rates and even though the device is tuned to feel snappy through faster animations, it still doesn’t due to these issues.
RAM management is decent but not the best. The device runs on NxtQuantum OS based on Android 15 and for the most part, it seems like a ColorOS/OxygenOS rip off. While that’s not entirely a bad thing, the optimisation of the software is. The device lacks smoothness and doesn’t handle the basics well in some areas.
For instance, when the Refresh Rate is set to auto switch, it barely goes to 90Hz and you can literally feel the device lag even when using apps like WhatsApp or Instagram. To get the handset to perform smoothly most of the time, I had to manually switch the refresh rate to 90Hz.
The quick settings panel, the settings app, etc., seem to have been inspired by Oppo’s ColorOS. Features like Privacy Space, App lock, Hide apps, Eye comfort mode, dynamic capsule, smart motion gestures, game mode, etc., are all here. Some of these seem to be half-baked. For example, I could hide apps but it didn’t tell me how can I access those if they are hidden and I can’t seem to find a way to do that. I have also faced crashes for some apps, like Global Search, when opening one of the suggested AI apps, like Grok or DeepSeek.
Fortunately, the software stays clean with no bloatware or ads to be found. Pre-installed apps, apart from Google apps, include the likes of a Game booster app, a Mobile butler app for one-click optimisation, radio, Phone Clone, and a cleaner app.
For customisation, you can change the charging animation, apply themes, change icon styles and wallpapers, change the tile shape of quick settings, and that’s about it. The device was running on the May 2025 security patch out of the box which is not too old.
The device supports 4G, Dual-Band Wi-Fi, GPS, as well as Bluetooth and the performance of these remained optimal.
Battery
The AI+ Pulse is backed by a 5000mAh battery with standard 10W charging. The brand does give you a charger in the box along with a cable and a silicone case as well. Coming back to runtime, the AI+ Pulse can easily last you a day considering you anyways cannot perform demanding tasks on the phone. It could give me around 6 hours of screen-on time and could go further with my usage patterns and on Wi-Fi at most of the times. However, charging times are painful, with the device taking over 2 hours to charge from 0 to 100 percent.
Cameras
The AI+ Pulse has a single 50MP f/2.0 camera sensor on the back and a 5MP camera on the front for selfies. The device offers a minimal camera app with features like the “Cheese” hotword detection to automatically click a photo, quick capture with volume down key, watermark, a pro mode, smile shutter, AI scene detection, Google Lens, night mode, slow motion video, and more.
Outdoor shots from the AI+ Pulse look below average in terms of colours and detailing both. The colours look faded while there’s negligible sharpness in the shot. Dynamic range also seems poor and so does the Autofocus speed. There’s also some amount of shutter lag so if you move your phone quickly after taking a photo it’ll come out blurred.
Speaking of portraits, the device has a hard time detecting the subject in the shot. Moreover, despite multiple attempts, it still couldn’t identify the subject in my case and gave me a blurred photo 5 out of 5 times. When it does detect the subject, the EDGE detection goes for a toss, blurring our parts of the subject as well.
When indoors, you can expect okay-ish shots in terms of quality as the colours are handled a little better. However, detailing in the shot is still not enough. Further, the device often fails to focus on the subject despite multiple manual tries as well.
As a result, the photo could completely get blurry and distorted, as seen above. Forget shooting with this device in low-light conditions as even Night mode can’t help the shot look better. Such shots have noise, low levels of detailing, and the colours also go for a toss.
As for selfies, they look decent. While skin tones look warm, the overall quality of the shot is considerably low, making it look straight up like an oil painting. The exposure could also go haywire in case of bright backgrounds. This is also the case with the rear camera in certain situations.
