iPHONE 13
than its predecessor away from mains
power; while the estimates on the
specs page have jumped from 15 to
17 hours for video playback, from 10
to 13 hours for video streaming, and
from 50 to 55 hours for audio.
(Aside from the yearly software
optimizations that enable Apple to
draw more performance from the
same hardware, the 13 mini actually
has a larger-capacity battery than
the 12 mini, having jumped from
2,227mAh to 2,406mAh.)
But in real-world use, things didn’t
seem massively different.
Just like last year, the mini
generally proposes Low Power Mode
at some point in the evening (this
happens automatically when it hits 20
per cent), and usually finishes the day
somewhere between 10 per cent and
20 per cent. There was one anomalous
day on which the phone made it to
close of play on 25 per cent, which is
great, but there was another when it
scraped home with 4 per cent, which
eagle-eyed readers of our 12 mini
review will have spotted is even lower
than the 7 per cent which was that
device’s worst day.
Looking on the positive side, it
might be noted that the 13 mini never
failed to make it through a full day
on a single charge, and usually did sowith reasonable ease: that, surely, is
the main threshold of acceptability
for a phone’s battery performance.
But I would retort that batteries
degrade from the first day you use
them, and because I was testing a
brand-new sample this is the very
best performance you can expect. A
full day of use is indeed the minimum
expected performance; but a year
down the line you may not be able to
depend upon it.
So much for subjective testing:
what about the hard numbers? The 13
mini lasted 6 hours, 33 minutes in the
Geekbench 4 battery test, compared
to 8 hours, 11 minutes for the iPhone
13, 9 hours, 15 minutes for the 13 Pro
and a whopping 11 hours, 41 minutes
for the 13 Pro Max. It’s very much the
runt of the litter in this respect – but
do please note that Geekbench is
a demanding test designed to push
phones to their limit, rather than a
representation of typical usage.VERDICT
I doubt this is going to change
anyone’s mind.
I will repeat much of what I said
last year: this is a super-powerful
phone with a great screen and
cameras in a convenient, highly
portable chassis, and it has an awful