An Analysis of Thermal Throttling and Sustained Performance Degradation in Modern Mobile Processors

Abstract: Mobile processors are advancing at a blistering pace, but managing the heat they generate remains a massive challenge. This paper investigates how different tiers of smartphone processors handle heat buildup and performance drops during a variety of sustained workloads, including 3D rendering and high-resolution media consumption. By using diagnostic tools (ADB) to bypass standard benchmark software, raw hardware metrics were extracted directly from the devices. The data reveals that highly clocked processing units generate extreme heat during heavy compute tasks, suffering massive performance drops (up to 35%) to stop themselves from overheating. In contrast, processors designed for balanced power draw naturally operate cooler by prioritizing efficiency cores. Furthermore, the data demonstrates that offloading sustained media tasks to dedicated Video Processing Units (VPUs) significantly reduces thermal saturation across all architectures, providing a more stable, long-term user experience.

Keywords: System on a Chip, SoC Microarchitecture, ARM Cortex-X, Thermal Throttling Management, DVFS Optimization, big.LITTLE Task Scheduling, Performance Degradation, Android OS Telemetry.