From the perspective of user experience and safety when using mobile devices, skin (outer surface) temperature-aware thermal management, along with the application processor die-junction temperature, is crucial. Traditional thermal management techniques have ignored the combined effect of the junction and skin temperatures, resulting in unnecessary performance degradation due to excessive thermal throttling. We propose a novel thermal management method for mobile devices, by incorporating an adaptive thermal property control (ATPC) technique. The ATPC technique is designed to adapt the thermal properties between the junction and skin according to their thermal margins. Intensive simulation results show that the ATPC technique prolongs the maximum performance duration of the mobile device up to 34 min in the nominal application processor power consumption range of 2.9–4.6 W. In other words, the technique provides a performance gain of approximately 7% by preventing false early thermal throttling.