iPhone 12 Mini Review: Are Small Phones Back? By Thao Huynh

This video is sponsored by star shark, usually with smaller versions of phones. You have to deal with quite a few compromises, but with the 12 mini you're, essentially getting the exact same phone as the iPhone 12, just smaller hi, everyone entire all right. So this is by far my favorite iPhone in years and reminds me of why I was such a huge fan in the past. I'm sure we've all noticed that smartphones are getting bigger and bigger and look. I love using a large high resolution display, but I just don't love carrying it around. If I don't have a bag with me, and it's just sitting in my pocket, I'm constantly worried about it falling out and breaking not only does the iPhone 12 mini fit into all my pockets better.

It's also one of the lightest phones. I've used seriously, it's really light any lighter, and it might start to feel like a toy. It's been so refreshing using a smallish phone. I say smallish because it's still a two-handed phone for me, for example, to get to the control center or the notifications I kind of had to shimmy the phone down a bit to reach the top corners. I guess I just need to train myself to use the one-handed mode.

Look, I'm not trying to drop my phone here so two hands. It is for me. If you have larger hands, though you're probably good to go. I absolutely love everything about this throwback design. I mean the notch is more noticeable and the battery Wi-Fi and connection indicators are looking a little cramped up there.

But this is a nice display. You aren't getting the fancy, 90 or 120 hertz screen that popular android phones are doing this year, but I'll admit iOS animations are so smooth that I actually don't really miss it. I went with the white because the other colors didn't really appeal to me that new blue, that everyone's going crazy over was just way too jarring. Just a heads-up, this isn't a pure white depending on the lighting. It has a slight pinkish beige hue to it.

It's unique, and I love it, but it might not be for everyone. The 12 mini is actually smaller than the 2020 iPhone SE, but not quite as small as the OG iPhone 5s. The 5s was a dream to use with one hand back then the 12 mini size is still amazing and is likely the best small phone out right now. This is probably the smallest apple could go while still maintaining a battery life and thickness that made some sort of sense. Speaking of better life.

That was my biggest concern with this phone, especially on 5g, but you know what it actually hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. It still averages around four and a half to five hours of screen on time from me. That's definitely not amazing, and I've been able to fully drain the battery on a couple of occasions, but if you're, not gaming or doing heavy-duty stuff like that, it should still last a typical day, it's physically a small battery. So I can't say I'm surprised by the social battery performance. I mean it's a small phone right.

I also feel like I need to mention that you are not getting a charging brick in the box which, according to apple, will help cut down on e-waste and lower their overall carbon footprint. So that's an extra cost on top to consider. If you don't already have an USB charging, brick iOS 14 still has that simplicity that many people have grown to love using some bigger iPhones. It just never felt like the software scaled well to take advantage of the larger display on a small phone like this. It just feels like home, like how it was meant to be the ability to add.

Widgets are much needed and opens up some unique home screen setup options especially helpful as a way to push icons closer to the bottom. The app library, though, just confuses me: why can't we organize and create our own folders? You can't even move apps to a different category. Apple decides where an app goes, you're seriously better off doing a spotlight search rather than trying to find an app in there. The phone of course has apple's latest a14 chip paired with four gigabytes of ram and performance has been really, really good. I'm a little worried about the four gigabytes of ram, especially as the phone ages, but they've done well with less in the past, so it should be okay, okay, it's 2020 and most premium smartphones.

These days will take good to amazing photos. If, I'm being honest, the iPhone 12 mini. Isn't my favorite when it comes to pictures, don't get me wrong, though this camera is still killer. It has that typical iPhone look. Images come out more warm with a slight yellow tint.

It's not bad! If anything, a lot of people actually enjoy this. It makes things feel more cozy and inviting the 12 mini doesn't have a telephoto lens, so you'll only be able to zoom up to a max of 5 times. You do get an ultra-wide and if I had to choose only one I'll take that any day over a zoom lens. If you're coming from something like the iPhone 11, don't expect a massive difference. The cameras are very comparable.

The biggest improvement that you'll notice is that night mode is available on every single lens. It was really annoying trying to take a decent selfie or an ultra-wide shot on last year's iPhone at night. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but apple's auto night mode, where you don't have to manually switch to a dedicated night mode setting is cool. I like it out. The box iPhones are set to record video in HDR, which is great, but I've run into a bunch of compatibility issues.

Footage just looks wonky and overexposed. It's not really a big deal for me, so I've turned that off in the settings, alright we're shooting on the 12 midi. Now I have to give a huge shout out to the video sponsor surf track. So SUR shark is a VPN use, encrypt data sent to and from your devices. This ensures nobody can see where you are and what you're doing online super relevance on sketchy public, Wi-Fi being a Canadian one of my favorite uses for surf is to access content from other countries seriously.

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Free a large device definitely has its benefits, and I absolutely understand why a big display is important, but if you've been waiting for a powerful pocket friendly device, what are you waiting for this? Is it? Some people are gonna, be pissed that apple skimped on the charging brake and the internal storage, starting at 64 gigabytes shouldn't even be a thing at this point, you will be sacrificing some better life for a more compact phone, but if you're not heavy on your phone, you might not even notice I won't lie. I've fallen in love with the size. The 12 mini reminds me of a time when phones didn't dominate our lives like they do now. It's going to be really hard, transitioning back to carrying a larger phone after this. On the bright side, hopefully other manufacturers will follow apple's lead and give us some solid compact phones with no compromises anyways.

Thank you all so much for watching until the next one, I'm out of here you.

Source : Thao Huynh