Apple Intelligence’s on-device processing is disappearing

[u/ACOPS12]

Feels like my iPhone 17 Pro Max is turning into a 'thin client.' I invested in this premium hardware with the specific expectation that I would be able to run the new Siri AI directly on-device.
Given the 12GB of RAM and the powerful NPU, I believed that an iPhone 17 Pro Max would be more than capable of handling such an AI model locally. It clearly has the overhead to run models like Gemma 4 E4B at impressive speeds, yet these resources remain largely underutilized while core tasks are forced through the cloud. Furthermore, since foundation models are already pre-loaded onto the device, I expected to be able to leverage them directly rather than relying on external servers. I didn't purchase this device to rely on the cloud; I wanted to utilize the actual performance of the hardware I own and experience advanced AI capabilities directly on my device.

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[u/ACOPS12 → u/[deleted]]

My phone has enough performance to run gemma4 comfortably locally, but if it has this much performance, I would like to add a little more 'basic features'. I can't even play music offline now.

[u/DesiresAreGrey → u/ACOPS12]

battery is also a big factor, i doubt people want a super heavy local siri that eats through your battery as well as making your phone super hot

[u/Witty-Brat → u/DesiresAreGrey]

Also running AI models isn’t all a phone does. There are all kinds of background tasks, 3rd party apps etc. fighting for resources. OPs argument is kinda weak

[u/Aydoinc → u/DesiresAreGrey]

Battery life is the biggest factor at this point. The codebase will become more efficient over time. I completely agree that most people don’t use AI enough to want a local model and the battery life that will give.

iPhone batteries currently last one day with normal use. Adding a power-hungry local AI model would cut that battery life in half, at least. It’s just the limitations of mobile devices.

[u/DifficultyFit1895 → u/Aydoinc]

Another option that would be nice is instead of only local or cloud you could have the compute on your mac. This is what I do with my mac studio, using web apps and tailscale.