iPhone 12 mini vs. iPhone 12 vs. iPhone SE — Don't Get it WRONG! By Rene Ritchie

- I'm Rene Ritchie And for half a decade now, the I-phones have been big and bigger. And this year just bigger and big earlier than ever. But also this year Apple is finally giving us something small again. Modern SE or special edition but a full-on iPhone just mini. Some people will want it because it costs less but others will want it because it is easy less. Easier to hold in the hand and type with on the go, easier to fit in a pocket or bag.

But, with a smaller phone comes a smaller display and most importantly to many, a smaller battery. So, if you're having trouble deciding, if you're still tryna figure out if the iPhone 12 mini is worth those trade-offs, having a small phone again is worth having the small display and battery capacity. If you're hoping the mini might even be a bigger flex than the max, but you're worried about it just not lasting than long IRL then this is the video for you. Just drop, kick that subscribe bell or I'll double the nock size, and then let's do this. If price is the most important spec on your sheet this the top feature on your list then the iPhone 12 mini is a hundred bucks less than the iPhone 12 Non-mini the regular.

It starts at 730 SIM free with no trade-ins no carrier or other incentives at all. That's compared to 830 for the regular model. Now, that's still $330 more than the iPhone SE which is essentially the modern iPhone 11 guts just crammed into the iPhone eight shell. So if you don't care at all about things like full screen design, OLED display, face ID or the dual camera system, you can save even more money by going with the SE instead of the mini. Just remember, all of these are starting prices what you pay for the baseline 64 gigabyte configuration.

And if you like smaller content like you like smaller devices, if you stream everything on Spotify or Apple music or Netflix or Disney Plus and keep all your files on Dropbox or Google Cloud that might be absolutely fine for you. If not, you can go up to 128 gigabytes for all of them for 50 bucks more for the iPhone 12 mini and for the iPhone 12 and for a hundred bucks more than that, you can go all the way to 256 gigabytes. So you can really get all the capacity you can pay for. So, if you're intent on buying new, and price is a huge object, the iPhone SE will save you just a ton of it. If you really do you want full screen OLED face ID and that dual camera, but you don't wanna pay dime one more than you have to for it, the mini will still save you a C-note.

Now I know a lot of people say they don't really care about color because they'll just be putting it in a case anyway. But the color of the phone still pops out of the case. Especially around the edges. So, still make sure you get something you actually like. Black is just the most popular color and the iPhone 12 mini iPhone 12 and even the SE all come in that color.

Same with white. Also product red though. The iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12, have a newer slightly more orangy red. And those are all the options for the SE. But the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 12 also come in deep blue and like a minty green if that's how you wanna roll.

For some, the mini has almost nothing or nothing at all to do with price and just everything to do with size. See Apple pour the four inch iPhone five and original SE from their cold DED dead hands and left them with only a 4.7 and 5.5 inch option. And they've just always wanted their smaller one handed ease of use phone back. But with modern specs, the latest processor, the latest camera system and the mini finally just delivers on that. All of it at last.

Physically it's even smaller and lighter than the current second generation iPhone SE. But has a display almost as big as the old school iPhone plus 5.4 inches just trouncing the 4.7 inches of the current SE. That 5.4 inches isn't as big as the iPhone 10, 10 S or 11 pro, which were all 5.8 inches and nowhere nearly as big as the current 6.1 inch iPhone 12. Let alone the 6.7 inch iPhone 12 pro max but for the mini not being as big is the entire point. The ability to easily hold it and use it one handed to fit it into any pocket or bag from front to back from pack to clutch.

And this is just very much that you get that full on iPhone. Just many. What that means for the display is in every way but size the iPhone 12 mini is identical to the iPhone 12. But for 175 nits, it's identical to the iPhone 12 pro as well.625 typical versus 800 but the same 1200 nits max. And that's because Apple has gone just all in on all that this year, across the entire line.

So the same HDR, high dynamic range, deep blacks and bright whites, same 2 million to one contrast ratio for details in the shadows and the highlights. And yeah, same notch just smack up at the top. Even the same ceramic shield on the front, which combined with the new flatter design makes the iPhone 12 models significantly more drop resistant. The difference really is in the size.23 40 by 10 80 pixel resolution at 476 PPI which isn't quite as much as a 2532 X 1170 resolution as the iPhone 12 but just slightly better than its 460 PPI. It absolutely blows away the 1334 by 750 pixel resolution of the iPhone SE and it's 326 PPI though.

And the SE is also an LCD display not OLED. It's still P3 wide gamut but not HDR. Though for people who are bothered by things like pulse with modulation or smearing on OLED panels, LCD could still be a better option. And for those differences in physical size, it will mean that everything is smaller. Your videos, like TV shows and movies, your video games all smaller.

Same with the amount of information you can see on the screen at one time, and the size of things like text and you can use accessibility to boost that up. Absolutely. But then you get even less information on the screen at any one time. But it also means your thumb will be able to reach across the display and tap and swipe things far more easily to type one handed just far more easily, than any iPhone since the original iPhone SE. So what you give up in information density, you may well make up in single-handed usability.

And if you're worried about things like screen time and doom scrolling and phone addiction having less phone can also literally mean having less phone as in doing less with it. The best thing at least in my book about the iPhone 12 mini is that, except for a size and yes, the consequences of that size which I'll get to in a battery blasted minute, there really are very few almost no compromises. The camera system for example is just exactly the same as the iPhone 12. And that means 12 megapixels effective 26 millimeter F 1.6 wide angle and 12 megapixels effective 13 millimeter F 2.4, 120 degree ultra wide angle. With all of Apple's computational modes from smart HDR to deep fusion to night mode, not only on both cameras, but the 12 megapixel F 2.2 selfie camera as well. The iPhone SE by comparison only has a single 12 megapixel, slightly slower f/1.8 wide angle and no ultra-wide at all. Also only a seven megapixel, F 2.2 selfie camera with no depth sensing like on the iPhone 12 mini or regular. And that also means no face ID on the iPhone SE.

Though depending on, especially these days when a lot of us are wearing masks, just a lot of the time you may actually prefer a touch ID to face ID. With the iPhone 12 mini, you also don't get the extra LIDAR scanner and the effective 52 millimeter F 2.0 telephoto of the iPhone 12 pro. Nevermind the effect of 65 millimeter F 2.2 telephoto of the iPhone 12 pro max. But that beast looks almost twice the size and twice the price, and the whole point of the mini, is pretty much exactly opposite of the max. For video, both the iPhone 12 mini and regular, go up to 4K 60 or 4K 30 with Dolby Vision HDR with no HDR available on the SE, just EDR extended dynamic range, that's still a tops out at 4K 30.

So again, you can absolutely go iPhone 12 mini without giving up anything in the camera department at least compared to the regular iPhone 12. The 814 bionic chip set is the same in both the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 regular. Same Qualcomm, X 55 modem for fr one low and mid band 5G globally, And fr two, I band millimeter wave in the U. S. Also same four gigabytes of memory which is less than the six gigabytes in the pro models but more than the three gigabytes in the iPhone SE which uses last year's 813 bionic chip set.

And sure, yes the mini has more pixels to push around than the SE, those slightly less than the non mini and a smaller thermal envelope than either of them. Though at five nanometers, the 814 process is smaller and more efficient than the seven nanometer A13. And honestly, I think all of that, what we'll just end up being more or less a wash, just not enough difference for anyone to really notice day-to-day regular usage because the iPhone 12 processor is a year newer though, it'll probably get updates for a year longer than the iPhone SE with Apple typically doing four to five years of iOS updates these days, that means the iPhone 12 will probably take you to at least iOS 18 or 19 in 2024 or 2025, where the iPhone SE will tap out with iOS 17 or iOS 18 in 2023 or 2024. So factor in that longevity as you will. The mini like the regular 12 an SE still has a lightening port and can fast charge up to 50% in 30 minutes, and that's with Apple's new, but not included in the box 20 watt power adapter or any similar power adapter.

The iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 regular, but not the iPhone SE, also work with Apple's new MagSafe magnetic inductive charging system. But while the regular iPhone 12 can use it to charge up to 15 Watts, Apple rate limits the 12 mini to just 12 Watts, likely because the smaller size means they just have to be way more careful about charging speeds and heat if they wanna maintain that tiny battery health. And of course the inverse of the elephant in the room, the mouse in the house is that smaller batteries are just smaller. And so Apple rates the iPhone 12 mini as better than the iPhone SE, which does not have a great battery life, especially if you're gaming or doing anything else that just makes that A13 processor ramp up. But if you're doing something similar on the iPhone 12 mini, or using a lot of 5G, especially millimeter wave 5G, you will burn through that battery faster as well.

A small phone is like a small sports car, a convertible. You're getting it because you enjoy it. Maybe even love it, not because you need it to survive a weekend, off-roading. For that, there's an iPhone max. Anyway, for local video, Apple has the mini rated at 15 hours which is more than the 13 hours of the SE, but less than the 17 hours of regular 12 for streaming 10 hours.

So again, more then the eight hours of the SE, but less than the 11 hours of the 12. And for video 50 hours more than the 40 of the SE but less than the 65 of the 12. And if you're curious, that's five, two and 30 hours less than the pro max which has a battery probably bigger than the mini's entire body. So if battery life is important to you, if it's critical to you, especially if you are or expect to be out a lot, gaming a lot, using the camera a lot, traveling a lot, you either gonna want a bigger iPhone with a bigger battery, or are you gonna have to know what you're getting into if you love the mini size so much, you'll need an external battery pack or fingers crossed and updated MagSafe version of the smart battery case from Apple at some point, soon I hope because that's really the best of both worlds for a phone like the mini. Super light, super slim just for a lot of fun, with a big old battery pack you can just slap on the back when you need to do some work.

But seriously, real talk, balance what you want with what you need. The usability of a smaller phone with the convenience of a bigger built-in battery. And remember, whatever you try, if you end up just hating it, if you've made a mistake, you have a period of time where you can go back to Apple and exchange it. And if you have any more questions or just wanna chat about any of this, check out my members only discord where we talk about iPhones, min and max, iPads, watches, Apple Silicon, gear workflows and so much more. You can find it on my Patreon because yeah I have Patreon now.

Patreon. com/reneritchie. I set it up right after I quit my big media job back in March right before all at 2020 happened and started this new Indie channel. And it's great because there's a whole preview section where I share ideas and outlines for videos before they're even shot. Sometimes early versions of the videos before they go live.

Longer versions of interviews when they're available like 45 minutes with iJustine or Walt Mossberg or my entire videos of my event reactions. And there are even ways to get your name in the description of every video and even the credits. So to be more involved in this community, and to contribute directly to the creation of these videos and future projects, like my new podcast with Georgia Dow, check out patreon. com/reneritchie, or just click the link in the description and clicking that link just really helps out the channel. For a ton more on the iPhone 12, click the playlist above, I've already got a full review on the 12 and 12 pro detailing every single new feature and lots more to come.

So click the playlist and I'll see you in next video.

Source : Rene Ritchie