I can’t imagine self hosting an LLM-based search engine would be too viable. The hardware demands, even for a relatively small quantised model, are considerable. Doubly so if you don’t have a GPU to accelerate with.

You also start running into usability issues. There’s only so thin a phone can be before it’s less of a phone, and more of a blade that’ll bend if you sneeze at it wrong.

Especially since waterproof phones with replaceable batteries already existed. They aren’t exactly working from nothing.