Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
One of the biggest problems with AI chatbots is that you need to be online all the time. Cloud-based AI tools are wonderful when you’re online, but the moment you step out of reception, you’re cooked.
Unless, of course, you have an offline, local LLM that doesn’t require an active internet connection. Local LLMs are an excellent way to keep using AI without the internet, not to mention a huge privacy boost.
One of the major misconceptions about local LLMs is that you need super-powerful hardware to actually run anything. That’s not true. You can actually run a local LLM on your smartphone, and better still, it’s actually incredibly useful.
I’ve actually tried a few different apps when it comes to using local LLMs on my smartphone, and these are the best options.
Privacy aside, a local LLM is just really convenient.
There are a few reasons using a local LLM on your smartphone is worth doing; the importance will really depend on how you view the tech.
For me, it’s a combination of privacy and convenience. As much as I don’t want to admit to myself how much AI has become part of my daily routine, the fact is, it has. More than anything, I’ve replaced a huge amount of the regular Google Searches I would run daily with an in-depth AI chat instead.
So, keeping that running when I’m in situations without internet access is important to me. I live in the far reaches of Cornwall, about as far West in the UK as you can get. There are plenty of places down here where regular 5G and 4G connectivity doesn’t reach, let alone when I travel by train (patchy signal) or fly (no signal or ultra pricey flight Wi-Fi).
Privacy is the next big plus point for me. By now, most people understand that whatever you say to a cloud-based AI chatbot is being hoovered up, much like your Google Searches were before. It’s being fed back into the system to improve the AI, which is great, but that does mean you should be judicious with what you ask, say, and opine.
When you type a prompt into a cloud AI, that text is stored on a server you don’t control. But if you switch to local AI? Your medical questions, financial information, legal documents, and whatever other private information stay on your device.
Finally, cost. While you can use most popular AI chatbots for free perfectly happily, you’ll often encounter limitations. AI companies always want you to upgrade to the next tier to unlock higher limits, the latest models, and so on. But a local AI model means no subscription fee, which means an extra $20 in your pocket each month.
Now, I’ve tried a few different options for running a local AI on your smartphone, and there are a couple of apps that get the job done better than most.
Note: You’re not running the full AI model on your phone. You’re running what’s known as a quantized model, which is still very powerful but won’t destroy your smartphone with a single prompt!
One of the best ways to use local AI on your smartphone is through Google’s AI Edge Gallery, which is available for both Android and iOS devices.
In terms of implementation and ease of use, AI Edge Gallery is definitely up there, with every option laid out and explained simply. The AI models are easy to download and listed in order of what’ll suit your device, and the app explains the capabilities of each model under a tag like Ask Image or AI Chat.
The AI Edge Gallery is great because it gives you account-free access to Gemma 4, Google’s latest and greatest AI model. So, for example, you could load up AI Edge Gallery, select AI Chat, then download Gemma-4-E2B-it, which supports multi-model inputs (i.e., voice, images, text, etc.).
Within minutes, depending on your download speeds, you can be holding a fully offline chat with an AI on your smartphone.
Beyond basic chat, the app includes Agent Skills for augmenting models with tools like Wikipedia and interactive maps, a Prompt Lab for fine-grained parameter control, Audio Scribe for on-device transcription, and Ask Image for multimodal vision queries. Oh, and not forgetting Tiny Garden, which is a gardening game you control through text and voice prompts, and is a fun little look into what can be done with AI.
My only real gripe with AI Edge Gallery is that, at the time of writing, there is no chat memory. Once you close a conversation, it’s gone. This is a powerful app for local AI on your smartphone, but that’s a big problem for regular AI prompters.
The Google AI Edge Gallery is a mobile app showcasing high-performance, on-device generative AI. Using models like Gemma, it performs tasks like chat, image analysis, and audio transcription entirely offline. It provides developers and enthusiasts a private, secure playground to test local AI capabilities and agentic workflows directly on hardware.
The second app that brings local AI to your smartphone is MNN Chat, an open-source app that makes it really easy to use smaller AI models on your device. MNN Chat is better suited to smartphones outside “flagship” ranges, focusing more on AI models with a smaller footprint, such as the Qwen family.
However, don’t let that discourage you from trying, as the Qwen AI models are still superb for most tasks, and a great starting point for those just getting into local AI devices (be that on a smartphone or other hardware).
However, you’re not limited to just Qwen. You can use MNN Chat’s menus to choose between Thinking, Vision, Audio, AudioGen, and other model types, as well as swap between AI model repositories like HuggingFace, ModelScope, and Modelers.
But while MNN Chat definitely feels geared towards slightly more advanced folks, it’s still very simple to use. You find an AI model, hit download, then start chatting. And even more importantly, it has a chat history, so you can return to your conversation and keep going.
If you’re unsure, you could use MNN Chat’s integrated benchmarking tool, which gives you an idea of how the model will perform on your device. Higher prefill and decode token per second values indicate better performance for the benchmarked model.
MNN Chat is a mobile AI app that runs Large Language Models entirely on-device. By using the MNN inference engine, it ensures private, lightning-fast interactions without data leaving your phone. It supports multimodal inputs like text, images, and audio, featuring models like Qwen, DeepSeek, and Hunyuan.
Of course, local AI on your smartphone isn’t without compromise. I’ve been testing these models using an Honor Magic V5 and Nothing Phone 3. These phones have different capabilities but have held up well, but they were both launched in 2025.
Older devices with less-powerful hardware may struggle more. If you are using an older device, MNN Chat is likely the better option for local smartphone AI, as it has a comprehensive list of more lightweight AI models. You should be able to find something that balances power and battery life; use its benchmarking tool to figure out if your device is up to the challenge.
Storage is another consideration. The models themselves take up serious storage — a single capable model can run anywhere from 1GB to over 4GB, so if your phone is already squeezed for space, you’ll need to factor that in before downloading.
The good news is that quantized models make it easier than ever to run local AI on your smartphone, and both Google AI Edge Gallery and MNN Chat are designed specifically with that in mind.
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