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What if you use the camera? Have you been travelling somewhere lately? How does it hold up?
I go travelling for work frequently. The iPhone 13 (on 85% health!) happily goes all day with camera, Safari, maps and music no problem.

If you’re buying one new then provided you’re not doing any intensive gaming it will easily last for a whole day. On 17.5 it’s still incredibly quick with no frame skips.

The camera quality is still absolutely brilliant too:

IMG_1620.jpeg
 
25% battery loss with only music playing indicates bigger problem than worn out battery.
If the real reason behind replacing the phone is really battery life - we all are often just looking for justification - try some common fixes:
* Reboot, should fix misbehaving/hanging apps or processes.
* Kill apps known for eating battery life in the background. Facebook, social media in general... Those are much more likely to kill your battery life than battery wear.
These small fixes solved my battery issues over the years better than buying a new device. Which you can do also, but it might not fix your battery life. Just give you good feeling of having a new device ;-)
Further, there are limits - some members of my family use their phone for hours of FaceTime calls and the only solution for that is add on battery. They make Magsafe batteries now which work amazingly well.
 
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Lots of previous comments here that I agree with overall. Not sure what you mean by “trust is gone” esp. when you plan to upgrade to another iphone by the same company… to reiterate a few points made by others, an “honest answer” includes:
—absolutely a non-mini (and a non-12-mini) iPhone will have way better battery life than what you’re dealing with currently
—it heavily depends on your usage, re: how well a 13 non-mini would serve you
—you could get a phone of any type, year, size and have its battery hold capacity for years vs. some that deteriorate much sooner (1.5 - 2 years is my average personally before it’s noticeably degraded)

///

—waiting a 2 months might be doable if you need or want the latest or just to see what is released, but personally at 84% on a 12 mini I would update that immediately to either a 13 mini, or a 14 or 15 regular. Life is too short to deal with such a notoriously bad-battery model so many years after it was released.

///
Finally, my own personal experience that is likely not shared by many, since 99% of people today walk around with ginormous phones sticking out from their pockets:
—if you’re at all like me you will not be able to deal with the larger phones due to how they are too big for pockets. I tried a 14 regular for a couple weeks, the larger battery and screen were great but the size was just not enjoyable for me, so I replaced it w/ a 13 mini. I will let go of this phone and my resistance to larger ones when I must (say in a couple years if there is no SE 4 or future minis) but for now I’ll keep this one as long as possible.


Good luck in your decisions, I suspect that whenever you replace it, with whatever you choose, you’ll be relieved and wish you did it a bit sooner.
 
My 13’s battery is down to 89% battery health and can still last me a full day on most days. I am a heavy user with 6+ hours of SOT. I’ll get a battery replacement once my phone reaches 2 years old in Jan 2025.
 
Anything of a regular (6.1”) size starting from iPhone 13 will give you a great improvement to your ageing mini’s battery capacity.

While you are looking for your upgrade, as others have mentioned, using 5G and Bluetooth are both very energy hungry, so if you don’t want to worry about your battery you could flip it to low-power mode (your iPhone will go to 4G temporarily).
 
Thank you for your replies. I'll wait for the SE and see what it's going to be like instead, I think.
Also, deleting Instagram off my phone has greatly improved my battery life.
 
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The iPhone 13 is still a very capable device and will be for a few years yet. I got mine in April 2023. Battery health is 95% and I'm quite a heavy user.

Overall, I'm happy with battery life. I did have some issues recently when I updated to iOS 17.5.1, but this settled after a few days.

I'd recommend the 13. Prices are pretty good now too (at least here in the UK).
 
I have a 13 pro max and the battery life is still pretty good after two years. It lasts me all day with ease. I recently went to a wedding out of town about 3 hours drive and was out all day pretty much. I took it off the charger at 7 am and didn’t get home until midnight. I was using it heavily that, talking pictures and using it on the drive (not me driving) to wedding and back. I had taken my MagSafe charger but didn’t even need to use it in the end.
 
The iPhone 13 is still a very capable device and will be for a few years yet. I got mine in April 2023. Battery health is 95% and I'm quite a heavy user.

Overall, I'm happy with battery life. I did have some issues recently when I updated to iOS 17.5.1, but this settled after a few days.

I'd recommend the 13. Prices are pretty good now too (at least here in the UK).
But I should be more careful and I'm not kidding. Sometimes I look at the stores in Poland and sometimes iPhone 14 has been cheaper and also has 128GB of storage. Usually happens when iPhone 14 is on a discount. I've been still thinking about waiting till the new iPhones will be released so the prices will drop even more.
 
In general, you should stay away from 5G high speed networks. They are of no use for mobile workloads. It will in increase your battery live by a magnitude for any phones, even the ones with battery capacities smaller than 80%.
 
In general, you should stay away from 5G high speed networks. They are of no use for mobile workloads. It will in increase your battery live by a magnitude for any phones, even the ones with battery capacities smaller than 80%.
I agree that 5G is slurping battery more than 4G. And it seems like older devices like the 12 and 13 consume more than the newer devices which kinda makes sense when comparing features on the modem chipset that qualcomm is providing.

But it is getting harder to "avoid" 5G since networks are getting updated and you coverage is sometimes a mix of 3g, 4g and/or 5G. Sometimes 4G coverage can be bad and 5G is better and vice versa.

I can imagine that 5G sometimes can be beneficial if you need to download a bigger amount of data as its doing it faster than 4G or 3G, but havin said that. I do think 4G is a sweet spot for the average user in terms of battery consumption.
 
Generally, iPhone batteries are relatively good vs. competitors. However- as you are experiencing- it's only a matter of so many charging cycles before they will fade quickly. Batteries wear out and yours is likely in that well-worn window.

If you are happy with your phone, get a new battery and you'll have "new battery" life again. That will certainly cost a lot less than buying a new iPhone.

One more thing: since you have a mini, you might want to also look into a mini battery case like this example. That will get you more battery than the only the new replacement battery inside. Pairing a battery case with a new battery should get you much longer use life between charges.
I bought a battery case. Thank you so much. I didn't know such cases exist. I just got it today. It works.
 
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Ideally you did BOTH: new battery + battery case, as battery case is not really meant to be replacement battery but augmented or EXTRA battery. If the worn-out battery inside remains the same battery, the case benefit will be somewhat constrained by what may still be inside.

Many battery cases work by recharging the battery inside vs. actually being a spare battery. So if the capacity in the one inside is down to nearly nothing, it's going to be recharging that near nothing capacity over and over. Use will further wear down the near nothing towards nothing... probably reaching a point where a very healthy battery case battery doesn't "see" enough capacity to work as it should.
 
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Ideally you did BOTH: new battery + battery case, as battery case is not really meant to be replacement battery but augmented or EXTRA battery. If the worn-out battery inside remains the same battery, the case benefit will be somewhat constrained by what may still be inside.

Many battery cases work by recharging the battery inside vs. actually being a spare battery. So if the capacity in the one inside is down to nearly nothing, it's going to be recharging that near nothing capacity over and over. Use will further wear down the near nothing towards nothing... probably reaching a point where a very healthy battery case battery doesn't "see" enough capacity to work as it should.
But I checked online, I'd have to disable Find my, send my phone away etc and I can't really do that because I need Duo mobile etc. But now I can at least charge it on the go. The battery health is currently 83% which isn't bad for the years I've been using it. The thing is it just runs out fast. I'll see in the future. I have to get it replaced or a new phone at some time.
 
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