lot to recommend it. If you’re in the
overlap of the Venn diagram between
‘wanting a small iPhone’ and ‘being
prepared to pay top whack for it’, this
is a brilliant choice for you.
The problem is that very few
people appear to be in that overlap
zone, and one would imagine that
most of those bought the iPhone 12
mini last year. And the improvements
from the 12 mini are not significant
enough to justify an upgrade:
Cinematic Mode is appealing, but
the other changes to the camera
set-up are difficult to detect in any
but the most artificially demanding
conditions, while the additional
processing power won’t be felt until a
year or two down the line.
My sense is that most potential 12
mini customers
were put off by
one (or more) of
three factors: the
screen was too
small for their
liking; the battery
didn’t last long
enough; and the
price was too
high. The first
and third have
not changed, and
while Apple talks
a good game about the second one,
it doesn’t appear in testing to have
changed a great deal.
So it’s another 4.5-star review, and
it gets my personal recommendation.
But I can’t see this phone turning
around the fortunes of Apple’s small-
phone division (the next iPhone SE,
being both small and relatively cheap,
is the key release), nor can I see Apple
releasing an iPhone 14 mini next
year. Which is a shame, really, but
understandable. David PriceSPECIFICATIONS
- 5.4in (2,340x1,080; 476ppi) Super
Retina XDR OLED display - iOS 15
- Apple A15 Bionic (5nm) processor
- Hexa-core (2x 3.22GHz Avalanche,
There’s a lot to like about the iPhone 13 mini.