I don’t know, my android phone 2 devices before (sony ericcson xperia x10 mini from 2010) was orders of magnitude smoother and faster (with 256MB of RAM!), and it didn’t get scorching hot from simply being turned on.

Honestly, try browsing the web for a few minutes and it gets uncomfortably hot. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if some devices (mine included) have buggy hardware more so than the one you got, because I would expect much worse overall opinions otherwise.

And arm is not a new compilation target, so I don’t buy software differences being entirely the culprit, either. Worse battery life? Sure, that would explain it. But having trouble running a terminal and opening settings in 45 seconds is just criminal.