phone – the last of a dying breed, it
would appear – is the right one for you.
DESIGN
The physical design has barely
changed from last year, with the
same squared-off edges and iPhone
4-style nostalgia aesthetic as on the
12-series handsets.
Apple habitually goes four or more
years between chassis redesigns (the
iPhone SE from 2020, in one of the
company’s more extreme examples
of recycling, was based on a design
from 2014), so this is hardly unusual,
and it’s not a bad thing in any case:
the 13 mini is a great-looking and
beautifully constructed device.
I’m just warning 12 mini owners
not to expect
meaningful visual
change.
Of course,
the device’s USP
within Apple’s
range is its
size, and while
this evidently
doesn’t float
the boat of the
average iPhone
buyer, I love the
convenience and
portability of the
5.4in screen and 140g body. I’ve been
using an iPhone 12 Pro for a year, and
expected to find it difficult adapting
to a smaller screen – but in fact, the
opposite was the case. I found the
screen perfectly usable for games
and TV, and was mainly struck by how
small the phone felt in my pocket.
Several times I panicked and thought
I’d left it behind somewhere, but no: it
was there, I just couldn’t feel it.
That 140g figure is slightly up on
last year, incidentally, and the 13
mini is also a quarter of a millimetre
thicker than the 12 mini; I can’t
possibly imagine you’ll notice either
change. A more significant change
is the switch from a vertical to a
diagonal alignment on the rear cameraThe 13 mini is a great-looking and beautifully constructed device.