Has anyone tried running a distributed LLM across multiple phones?

So I've been going down a rabbit hole trying to run local LLMs without dropping 800+ on a Mac or GPU. RAM prices are insane right now and I realized that used phones have decent unified memory for dirt cheap. My plan would be to buy 2x Poco F5 Pro (12GB each, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1), these go for like 150-200 used with cracked screens or even with normal ones, root them, run Ubuntu in a chroot (so I get full Linux networking, no skip the android bs), build llama.cpp with RPC support, connect them over WiFi (same home router), one phone runs as an RPC worker, the other as the main server, run Qwen3.8-27B at Q3 quantization split across both phones, then access it from my PC through a browser The math checks out on paper, 2x 12GB phones in Linux (Android services killed) gives about 20-22GB usable If I would have to guess. Q3_K_S is 12.2GB which splits fine across two phones with room for KV cache. Memory bandwidth is 51 GB/s per phone so I should theoretically get around 4-5 tok/s. I'd put heatsinks + small fans, lock the CPU governor to performance mode, and cap the battery at 70% to avoid swelling. Tho I do have some questions: Has anyone actually done this or something similar? Specifically with llama.cpp RPC over WiFi between two Android phones running a chroot? The Adreno 730 (SD 8+ Gen 1) does the OpenCL backend in llama.cpp actually work on it? The official docs only list 750+ as verified but the community tutorial says Gen 1 should work. Anyone tested this? Is 51 GB/s memory bandwidth per phone realistic to expect around 4-5 tok/s for a 27B model split across two devices? Or am I being too optimistic? Any tips with running llama.cpp RPC server inside a Linux chroot on a rooted phone? I know the chroot shares the kernel's network stack so WiFi should just work, but wondering if anyone's actually tried it. The whole thing would cost like $350-400 total (2 phones + heatsinks + fans + a multi-port charger) and it would be possible to get a 27B parameter model running locally with zero cloud dependency. Seems too good to be true so I want a reality check before I commit. If it works I'll 3D print a little enclosure for both phones with integrated cooling. Happy to share the results, and I appreciate any answers, ideas, tips. submitted by /u/QpiterOFFICIAL [link] [comments]

Source: r/ollama | 2026-08-26