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How can you not have a Jacques Dutronc song stuck in your head when you think about this mini iPhone 📱.
Going from the X to the mini and honestly it’s great to find this form factor again.
The iPhone 5 design
The iPhone 5 design was for me the benchmark, and Apple is bringing that design back. Could this be the result of Jonathan Ive’s dismissal ? In any case it’s quite funny to see the fashion cycle perpetuate itself with iPhones when you look at the first one, then the iPhone X first cycle, and finally the iPhone 4 and iPhone 12 second cycle.
Since the iPhone 5, technology has allowed the screen to fill all the available space and that’s great 👍 — it still lets you use the iPhone with one hand 🤚. I love this form factor. Try doing your shopping and ticking ✅ off your lists with a phone in one hand and I promise you’ll see the point of a mini iPhone!
We’re now waiting for the minor evolution that will be presented as a revolution when the notch finally disappears from the top of our screens.
One regret since the iPhone 5: the camera module sticks out. Yet on this mini with its reduced battery 🔋 capacity, it would have made more sense to add a bit more thickness to compensate for that loss of battery life…
Battery life on the iPhone X
As I was saying, I’m going from an iPhone X to an iPhone mini and I haven’t noticed any drop in battery life. I can understand the concern for people who had an iPhone 11.
Be careful about using dual SIM though — I noticed that with two SIMs in the device, the battery drain was real compared to the iPhone X.
If you have a job where you always have a charger nearby, the battery concerns don’t apply. On the other hand, if you use your phone very heavily and away from a power outlet, then this clearly isn’t the right model for you.
The camera gets better
Still comparing to my old iPhone X, photos are more detailed and much less processed — at least when the light is good enough.
In low light I can see very little improvement, let’s be honest.
Portrait mode, as I said in another article, is a disaster the moment the subject is moving. So portrait shots of young kids are out. A wide-aperture lens on a full-frame sensor still has a bright future ahead of it.
Power for days
On the performance ⚡️ side, honestly I don’t notice much of a difference — maybe I generate the lockdown exit certificate a bit faster these days.
I’m not a video gamer, so I can’t make an objective comparison on that front between the iPhone X and this little iPhone.
So who is the mini for?
I’d recommend it to the vast majority of people, especially those who can’t put their phone down. Maybe they’ll spend a little less time on it. For professional use, go for the non-mini version, because adding a second SIM drains a lot of battery and that can be annoying in practice.
Having a phone 📱 that you can use with one hand means you can do things faster the moment it’s out of your pocket. In fact, you’ll forget about it very quickly in the first few days — to the point where you’ll think you left it at home when it’s actually in your pocket 😝.
One last word on price: this time Apple was very reasonable. I paid €759 at sosh . A fairly contained price for a premium iPhone.
