iPhone 12 mini Review — One Month Later! By Rene Ritchie

- In this video, iMore's Managing Editor, Lory Gil and I are talking all about Apple's smallest flagship ever, the brand new, brand tiny iPhone 12 mini. The size, the features and you better believe the battery life. What we like, what we don't like and where it needs to go next and plot twist where Lory is going next because today is her very last day at iMore. And maybe, probably, her very last appearance on this channel, at least for a long while. Sponsored by CuriosityStream with Nebula. I've got a ton more reviews, previews and deep dives coming your way.

So make sure you've hit that subscribe button and bell and you won't miss any of it. I believe that you have had less than your heart for something exactly like this since pretty much right after the original SE came out. - Yeah, probably 2016. - What I love so much about the mini is that it really, like we'll get to the battery life in a hot minute, but it really does in every other way take everything about the iPhone 12 and just like distill it down into a smaller size. Oh, the blue is so nice.

- I know, isn't that gorgeous? Yeah, So that that's been the argument that I've been begging Apple to, I've been making and begging Apple to do since the iPhone SE which is stop giving us this sort of half version of a small phone give us the full featured phone in a smaller size. It's not about money. It's not because they want it to be less expensive. They will pay even, maybe even $1000 for a full-on iPhone 12 mini pro, if that's a thing. So we want all of the features that come along with a brand new phone and it's very frustrating to not be able to get them also with the iPhone 12 mini, we got all of the exact same amazing features that the iPhone 12 got.

And that has been such a joy for me to not feel like I'm compromising on my speed, to not compromise on the camera quality that I get. It's everything literally that I've ever wanted in a phone and in the size that I want. - Feels like with the previous iPhone SEs Apple was aiming for a price point. And part of the way that you reached that price point was by sticking to the smaller, older body designs. And there certainly is a market like there's an a market for economy cars and those are generally smaller but I think now Apple thinks the market is mature enough or they're just stretched enough, they can handle it now is that they're making a phone that's not for the economy market.

It's for the people who would buy like, I don't wanna be too cliched about it, but like a Miata or like a, you know, like with a Cabriolet, like the Porsche that at the top comes down on, like it feels like a sporty little car of a phone. - Yes, exactly. Or maybe something even like the mini Cooper, you know like something that is today's small version of something super awesome. In fact, I kinda think of it as my little Mini Cooper phone (laughs gently). - So were your expectations so high? So this is I guess my question because you did a terrific review on this.

Were your expectations so high that it was harder for Apple to please you? Or did they basically just have you at mini? - No, they didn't just have me at mini. They needed to prove to me that this phone was a top tier phone at the size that I wanted. I frankly, I expected to be disappointed in the size of the phone. Even though they show someone holding it in their hand and you people have made drawings of what it's supposed to look like, I still fully expected to open it up and say, it's smaller, that's great, but it's not as small as I wanted it to be, and it's not as small as the iPhone SE, but I can tell you I opened that box and was like, wow, this is like the iPhone SE, this really is a small phone. This really does work.

This is what I wanted. So they had a lot to prove to me that this was gonna be the phone that everybody who wants a small phone gets and they came through with that because not only did I open up that box and say, yes this is the small phone that I wanted, I also used that phone and had success everywhere in terms of how fast it ran, the things I could do with it, slipping it into my back pocket. It's just been a fantastic experience, and I will never turn back (laughs gently). - One of the things I like best about it is that it has a body that's not as small as the original SE absolutely but it's smaller than the current SE but yet the display is almost the size of the previous plus models. And since we went to the modern design with the iPhone 10 having to go back to the older design for the smaller phone has always been like a bridge too far for me.

I just, I'm all in on the almost edge to edge gesture based navigation, all of those things and having all of that in a modern phone that's this small I think is a big selling point for me. - Yeah and in terms of screen size, I know what you mean. I was using the iPhone 11 pro before switching to the iPhone 12 mini. So that was a significant screen shrinkage for me. And I was worried that it would be hard for me to get used to it, especially with my aging eyes.

The only time I really feel that I'm noticing the difference in sizes when using the keyboard. The keyboard, it's kinda smashed into that size a little bit more. It's not as bad as the original iPhone SE though. It's not that small. It's more like the, like the iPhone 6 through iPhone 8 size in terms of like how much space is on there.

It took a little bit of getting used to, but thank goodness for auto-correct, which I never thought I would say - Yeah, nobody ever says that (laughing gently). - But in this case, I was glad for auto-correct. 'Cause I did do a little bit of key mashing until my fingers got used to it. But I very quickly got used to the fact that it was smaller than the iPhone 11 Pro size, because everything fits so nicely on the screen, it is sort of shrunk down. So it's not that everything is crammed into a smaller space, it's more like everything is just a little bit smaller.

So you just take a couple of days to adjust to it and then it ends up being a very comfortable experience. And I can say like, I've also had the joy of using the iPhone 12 Pro max, that screen is absolutely fantastic. I can see why people love it, but that's for people who need their phone to be their computing device and for people like me, and I believe people like me that like a smaller phone, it's a compliment to the rest of our device catalog. So we don't need it to be big. And we prefer the portability over that huge screen size.

- So my one worry though is the battery life because Apple does wonderful things with power management and with the efficiency of their processors, and they have an OLED, they have all these things to get the most out of a battery as possible, but a physically smaller battery is still a physically smaller battery. And I spent all of last week on the 12 Pro Max which I can get like a day and a half almost two days out of. And I spent so far all of this week on the mini and it's been fine but I also realize that it's 2020 and I'm not going anywhere. So not only am I always next to a charger but I'm just not doing as much on my phone because I have my Mac or my iPad in front of me all the time. And if it was a normal year, you and I would be jetting, you know, we would have been getting to all those Apple, well, I would be jetting you'd be training to all those Apple events.

And we would be like on data all the time and working from our phones all the time and really stressing the battery. And it wouldn't last as long but I don't know if that's a game like a deal breaker. I think that's more of a, I love the small phone enough that I'm gonna just carry a power pack in my backpack if I need to. - Lemme me describe for you what one of my days at an Apple event might be like, in terms of what I would carry with me. I would carry a big old iPhone 11 pro, heavy, really big, doesn't fit in my back pocket.

And then I would also carry with me either the battery case or possibly both the battery case and a portable battery pack. I would always carry them with me because even though the iPhone 11 Pro has a fantastic battery life and I probably wouldn't run out of battery, guess what? I'd be worried that I might, so I'd bring it with me anyway. Now I've got this tiny little phone that I can slip into my back pocket and it's super lightweight. So I can carry a battery pack with me and not have the extra extra weight of having to also carry a big heavy phone that I can't even fit my back pocket. So to me, it's still a win-win situation because anywhere I would go that I thought I might even risk possibly running out of battery, I'm bringing that battery pack anyway.

Now I have a lighter phone to go with that packaging. - Yeah. It makes me really wish that Apple would make some next generation MagSafe battery that you could just slap on the back of this. So it would be like to use your mini Cooper analogy would be like the, or the smart car. It would be like the smart fortwo but you could slap it into the smart for six, if you really needed to take the kids to soccer but you didn't have to drag that extra car around unless you absolutely needed to.

So you could have your tiny little phone but then if you wanted to go camping for the weekend you would just slap on that mag safe pack and you'd be fine. - Yeah, and that's kind of the joy of MagSafe. I think honestly MagSafe was the unsung hero or the MVP of this year's announcements. We were so excited about all of these new iPhones that we didn't really consider just how impressive the technology behind MagSafe is and potentially will be for the rest of our future. - It has been a little bit divisive though because you do have to use that, not included in the box 20 watt to get the full 15 watts of charging power.

And I know you did a ton of experiments on it and you know some people love the wallet, some people don't like the wallet. Some people love the sleeve, some people don't like love the sleeve. Some people like that you can use the mag safe disc while your phone is charging, you can actually use it and hold it and you don't have to leave it on the table. Other people hate that you can't just take it off the table and it detaches the way a regular inductive charging disc would but now it comes with it. You gotta use two hands to get it off.

- I don't think you need to use two hands to pull it off. You just kinda slip your thumb under there and give it a little disconnect. It's not that hard. - I am gonna be salty about them taking the charger out of the box for as long as people have been salty about them taking the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack away. And I'm super salty that they don't include it with the MagSafe or the MagSafe Duo because the entire purpose of that thing is to charge it, and you can't do that with what's in the box.

I always think like, ah, it's not that that's not the user experience that I expect from Apple. So I think that is probably the biggest downside for me even on the mini. Have there been any other downsides for you? Is there anything you don't like as much about the mini that you expected or just things that you hope that they improve on for next time? - I would say, and this isn't that it's a disappointment with the iPhone 12 mini, it's part for what this model phone is but I really think that Apple could make an iPhone 12 mini pro. I think it's possible. They've proven that they can do this with the iPhone 12 it's missing a telephoto lens.

And the battery is definitely not as amazing as the Pro models are. And that one might not, they might have trouble with that one because that it's just a smaller phone, it's gonna be a smaller battery. But I think that there could be some improvements to the camera lens. I think that we could see something like a telephoto lens in this and it would not be a problem or the LiDAR sensor. I know there's a lot crammed into that tiny little body but technology is improving so fast and things are getting smaller so much faster.

I can definitely see within the next few years, if the the mini is popular enough that Apple will actually provide us with a mini Pro version. - All right, so you've been using this for, you know, a week two weeks by now. what is your current review for the iPhone mini if you had to sum it up for everybody? - I would say that if you have always wanted the smaller sized iPhone, you're not gonna regret this purchase. This is absolutely the best iPhone. Even if you went from something like the iPhone 11 pro to an iPhone 12 mini, you will not regret this decision.

It's absolutely fantastic. This is for us. This is for people who always loved that four inch form factor. It is our beautiful baby, pride and joy. If you're looking for a phone that's less expensive, do not get this iPhone 12 mini because that's not what this is for.

This is for small phone use. You should maybe look at the iPhone XR or iPhone 11 or something like that. Or the iPhone SE especially that's a really good price phone. This is for people who want a small iPhone. And this is the best phone since the iPhone 5S because the iPhone 5S actually was the premium phone at that time.

This is that same thing. So this takes us all the way back, that many years back, this is the phone. This is for us, all of our four-inch phone people. And yeah, I do see that the battery life isn't as good as it is with the iPhone 11 pro and with other larger battery phones but it's a compromise that I think all of us that prefer the mini phone are willing to make. - Right after this, Lori is off to Apple.

Yeah, Apple. And I'll miss working with her every week so damn much, but I'm also absolutely thrilled, thrilled that she'll still be working for all of us every day. Congrats Lori, I could not be happier or more proud. As always you can find the full uncut extended version of this chat up on Nebula. That's the streaming platform I'm building along with my education and creator friends like Ligo Ligo, Sarah Z, Ali Abdaal, Thomas Frank, BrainCraft, PolyMatter and so many more.

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Source : Rene Ritchie