Qwen 3.5 vs Gemma 4 on Your Phone: Which to Download

For most phones, Qwen 3.5 4B is the better all-round download: strong everyday answers, a thinking mode for math and logic, and the widest language list. Gemma 4 E2B is the pick for older phones with 3 to 4 GB of RAM or when you want fast replies. Gemma 4 E4B sits between them, and Qwen 3.5 9B gives the best answers of either family if your phone has 6 GB of RAM or more.

Both are free, open-weight models, both can read photos, and both run fully offline once downloaded. The real differences are size, language coverage and how each was built for phones. Here’s the comparison, and the easy way to settle it on your own hardware.

Qwen 3.5 vs Gemma 4 at a glance #

The context figures are what the models support. On a phone, the app’s memory setting is the practical limit, usually a few thousand tokens. The language counts are the makers’ own claims; real quality varies a lot between common and rare languages at these sizes.

The sizes you’d actually download #

These are the phone builds in the Personal LLM catalog, with the RAM each needs:

Image support is an extra download per model (195 MB to 1 GB). The app shows a “Fits your device” badge on each model, read from your phone’s actual RAM, so you don’t have to guess.

What’s different about how they’re built? #

Gemma 4’s “E” means effective parameters. Google’s small Gemma 4 models use a technique called Per-Layer Embeddings. E2B behaves like a 2.3-billion-parameter model when it runs, but its full file includes large lookup tables (5.1 billion parameters counting embeddings, per its model card). That’s why its memory needs are higher than “2B” suggests. Our guide to what 4B, 9B and E2B mean explains this in more detail.

Gemma 4 was trained to be compressed. The Gemma builds in Personal LLM are quantization-aware trained versions, meaning the model learned during training to cope with being stored at low precision. That keeps the download small without the quality loss you’d normally expect.

Qwen 3.5 is one family at many sizes. The same design scales from 0.8B on a phone to very large models in the cloud, with vision built in from the start. On a phone, you’re choosing how much of that family’s ability your RAM can hold.

Which is better for what? #

Rather than invent benchmark scores, here’s how the choice usually plays out in practice, and what to test yourself:

For thinking mode, both families can reason step by step before answering. It helps with arithmetic, puzzles and planning, and slows replies down, so leave it off for chat. For more on other languages, see offline AI in other languages.

Which is faster on a phone? #

Speed depends on your phone’s chip and memory as much as the model. As a rule, smaller files generate words faster, so Qwen 3.5 0.8B and Gemma 4 E2B are the quickest, and Qwen 3.5 9B is the slowest. On iPhones, models run on the GPU through Metal; on Android, GPU acceleration is available on Snapdragon phones with Adreno 700-series or newer graphics, and other phones fall back to the CPU.

The honest answer is to measure it. Personal LLM shows a live tokens-per-second figure on every reply and has a built-in benchmark for any downloaded model. Our guide to local LLM speed on a phone explains what the numbers mean.

Is one more private than the other? #

When you run either model on your phone, no. The model is a file, and the answers are computed by your phone’s chip. Nothing is sent to Alibaba, Google or anyone else. The only network use is downloading the file once. Privacy differences only appear if you use a company’s hosted chatbot instead of running the model yourself. We cover the questions people ask about the Chinese-developed model in is Qwen safe to use?

How to decide on your own phone #

The quickest way to settle Qwen vs Gemma is to try both with your own questions:

1. On Wi-Fi, download Qwen 3.5 4B and one Gemma model that fits your phone.
2. Start a chat with Qwen and ask three things you’d really ask: a work email, a factual question you can check, and something in another language if you use one.
3. Switch the chat to Gemma from the chat header and ask the same things. It’s the same conversation, so comparing is easy.
4. Look at the tokens-per-second figure for each.
5. Keep the one you prefer and delete the other to free up storage.

Personal LLM is free on iPhone and Android, with no account, and after the downloads it works in airplane mode.

For the setup steps and what each family does well on its own, see how to run Qwen 3.5 on your phone and how to run Gemma 4 on your phone.

Frequently asked questions #

Is Qwen 3.5 better than Gemma 4? #

For most phones, Qwen 3.5 4B gives stronger all-round answers at a similar size, and Qwen 3.5 9B is the strongest option if you have the RAM. Gemma 4 E2B is a very good choice for older or lower-RAM phones and for fast replies. Test both on your own questions.

Which uses less RAM, Qwen or Gemma? #

The smallest is Qwen 3.5 0.8B, which runs in about 2 GB. Gemma 4 E2B and Qwen 3.5 4B both need about 3 GB. Gemma 4 E4B needs about 5 GB, and Qwen 3.5 9B about 6 GB.

Are Qwen 3.5 and Gemma 4 free to use? #

Yes. Both are released under the Apache 2.0 license, which allows personal and commercial use. Running them on your phone costs nothing beyond the storage space.

Can both Qwen and Gemma read photos on a phone? #

Yes. Both families handle images. In Personal LLM you add a model’s image-support file once, then attach a photo or take one and ask about it, fully offline.