After almost a month with mine, my answer is … yes
and no.
I’ve almost posted my thoughts on my new iPhone 13 mini a few times so I guess this is the thread (well done if you bother reading all of this!). Naturally this is just all my own point of view, I realise everyone has their own preferences and ways they use their phones, and all power to you, however you like your phone.
First of all,
The Bad Stuff.
I guess I have a different perspective to many of you who are coming from (even) larger phones - coming from a 2017 (128gb) SE as my main phone before the mini it feels huge, not ‘mini‘ at all! It does fit in my pockets… but not in the effortless way my SE did. And yet the narrow aspect ratio makes it feel (bizzarely) more cramped in some ways than the SE did. I already miss TouchID and having a home button - FaceID and swiping up for Home are both inferior and less elegant IMHO (I understand others may disagree, and that’s fine).
There are small irritations which could be fixed, such as having no battery percentage in the ‘ears’ - the notch is indeed as ugly and annoying in daily use as I always thought it would be (hopefully I’ll get used to it more over time), and I would have preferred a squared-off rectangle display, I have never minded bezels. The ‘extra’ display area just feels like a waste of time and battery for little benefit.
The lack of a headphone socket seems just as stupid and anti-consumer to me now as it was when the iPhone 7 was announced, but I just use other devices for most of my personal audio listening, and I bought an adapter for when I need it.
The one bad thing about the otherwise excellent camera system is that it sticks out so much from the phone, the SE camera was flush.
And now,
The Good Stuff.
The camera is obviously much, much better than what I was coming from. Lovely. I take plenty of photos and though I have a couple of nice dedicated actual cameras and a few lenses I would use for certain stuff, it’s a truism that the best camera is often the one you have with you. And now that one I always have with me is a lot better. Very happy with the camera system. We are living in the future!
The display, albeit a weirdly narrow ratio and impaired by the notch, is beautiful. Happily I don’t seem to suffer from the issues some do with the OLED screens despite being someone who tends to be sensitive to that kind of thing (e.g. rainbow effect on projectors; horrible image persistence when reading white text on black backgrounds etc). I was fine with my SE’s LCD screen, but I have an Apple Watch and I could see the difference sometimes… so it’s a small thing but the phone/watch experience feels that tiny bit more consistent now, which is nice.
The squared-off sides and general design of the device, other than the colour options I wasn’t happy with, is beautiful - I’ve only had one iPhone with the rounded sides, which was my iPhone 6, and I hate the ‘soapbar’ feel. I mean I put it in a case anyway, but still.
It weighs the ‘right’ amount to me. My SE was lighter, but if I’m honest I would never have minded it being slightly heavier. I don’t want a very heavy phone, but there is such a thing as ‘too’ light. The 13 mini just feels ‘right’ to me.
Storage capacity is excellent. I went for the full 512GB as I plan on having this phone for a number of years, especially if Apple don’t make anything smaller again. I would likely have been fine with 256GB and I wouldn’t have gone to 1TB on this even if that were available (assuming it cost more) - but 512GB feels luxurious coming from 128GB.
Battery life seems amazing so far for my uses. The reportedly stingy battery of the 12 mini was part of my decision to wait for and ultimately choose the 13 mini over it, so I’m glad it’s slightly better, even if I think I probably would have been ok with the 12 mini’s battery.
On Colours █ █ █ █ █
Not really all that important, but…
I don’t really like the choice of colours available. There should always be a
█ true black or
█ grey in my opinion, and I don’t even like the shade of blue either - (the Pro models’ Sierra Blue looks great IMHO, and they also have the lovely Graphite… gah.). The pink just makes me think of marshmallows
…
*do not eat iPhone 13 mini (iPod Shuffle reference for the old timers here!)
Because I didn’t personally want blue or pink or off-white-beige (‘Starlight’ as cool as that sounds) or very dark blue (‘Midnight’, as cool as that also sounds) the only option remaining was the red. So I’m glad this year’s red is more red than the 12’s red. I would have still preferred true black or space grey, but I‘m already growing to love the red that I was somewhat forced to choose. I’ve put it in a dark grey case for now, and the few little flashes of red look quite cool IMHO. And hey, I’m
Porco (see avatar) I guess!
I have had red cases for my old phones sometimes so I’m ok with it.
One other minor point about the colour scheme is the silver screws either side of the lightning connector and silver Apple logo on the back of the device actually work quite nicely I think (though I’m sure the screws were just Apple saving a few cents…). The Apple logo particularly looks great - it can look silver or black depending on the angle/light reflection, both of which really complement the red. As per forum rules I won‘t comment on the ‘(Product) Red’ aspect, except to say it didn’t have a determining influence on my choice, but didn't hurt it either.
———
Overall, it is a great phone and I’m happy the so-called-mini got a second version, but I’d be lying if I said I thought it was perfect or exactly what I would have wanted given the option for my ideal iPhone.
So … yes
and no (we got there in the end!).
