Paper · arXiv 2504.19838
LLM-Powered GUI Agents in Phone Automation: Surveying Progress and Prospects
Guangyi Liu, Pengxiang Zhao, Liang Liu, Yaxuan Guo, Han Xiao, Weifeng Lin, Yuxiang Chai, Yue Han, Shuai Ren, Hao Wang, Xiaoyu Liang, Wenhao Wang, Tianze Wu, Linghao Li, Hao Wang, Guanjing Xiong, Yong Liu, Hongsheng Li
LLM-driven phone GUI agents evolve from script-based automation to intelligent systems, using advanced language understanding, multimodal perception, and robust decision-making to address generality, maintenance overhead, and intent comprehension challenges.
Abstract
With the rapid rise of large language models (LLMs), phone automation has undergone transformative changes. This paper systematically reviews LLM-driven phone GUI agents, highlighting their evolution from script-based automation to intelligent, adaptive systems. We first contextualize key challenges, (i) limited generality, (ii) high maintenance overhead, and (iii) weak intent comprehension, and show how LLMs address these issues through advanced language understanding, multimodal perception, and robust decision-making. We then propose a taxonomy covering fundamental agent frameworks (single-agent, multi-agent, plan-then-act), modeling approaches (prompt engineering, training-based), and essential datasets and benchmarks. Furthermore, we detail task-specific architectures, supervised fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning strategies that bridge user intent and GUI operations. Finally, we discuss open challenges such as dataset diversity, on-device deployment efficiency, user-centric adaptation, and security concerns, offering forward-looking insights into this rapidly evolving field. By providing a structured overview and identifying pressing research gaps, this paper serves as a definitive reference for researchers and practitioners seeking to harness LLMs in designing scalable, user-friendly phone GUI agents.