The iPhone 13 Mini and Pro Max. Two different worlds. I have both.
Hot and Cold.
I usually don’t write phone reviews. I am not a tech journalist. But, with rumors that the iPhone 13 mini is being discontinued, and with Apple’s increased trade in values, I had to get one. And that’s what I did. And I love this phone. But I don’t think it can replace my daily driver - my iPhone 13 Pro Max. Even though I really want it to. And so, I felt compelled to write this little review.
Some Context
I feel like tech reviews don’t put in necessary context, because everyone’s use cases are different, and their backgrounds are too.
My last four phones have been big phones. The Galaxy S9+. The Galaxy Note 10+. The iPhone 11 Pro Max. And lately, the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Since 2018, I’ve been living with big phones.
In my daily toolkit, my phone is primarily used for communication and media consumption. Ever since getting into college, I usually have my laptop on me at all times to do actual work. That’s why I switched to iPhone - they’re superior communication phones, and while they lack productivity prowess, that’s okay.
I bought a Pink iPhone 13 Mini, 128 GB, during Apple’s trade in event. With trading in my 11 Pro Max, I was able to drop the price of the phone to $325, tax included. $375 with the case. I could justify spending this instead of $800 to keep the 11PM.
Now - this isn’t going to be your usual review. I’m skipping all the design, specs, yada yada to talk about what it’s actually LIKE to use the mini phone after about a day.
Going mini!
Using the 13 mini is, to put it bluntly, a breath of fresh air. It is royally underrated how amazing it is to be able to touch every side of a phone without needing to play phone gymnastics.
The 13 Pro Max has definitely been the biggest offender of phone gymnastics. The phone is massive. It’s heavy. I usually need two hands to use the phone. So being able to primarily use the 13 mini with just one hand? Amazing. And being able to stuff it in a pocket with my wallet, or my earbuds - AMAZING. Couldn’t do that with the 13 Pro Max. That phone demands its own pocket.
Even just picking up the 13 mini to skip a song just…feels more natural. Compared to the 13 Pro Max where I need to do gymnastics to get my fingers in place to hit the skip button, using the 13 mini is a much more nimble experience, and I love it.
Not to mention with a silicone case, even with this phone being 3 ounces lighter than the 13 Pro Max, it feels very secure in my hands. It just feels like I can actually use this phone without the fear of fumbling the phone. And you don’t want to know how many times I’ve just dropped my 13 Pro Max while carrying it because, well, it’s a big phone.
In short - the 13 mini is portable. It’s lightweight. It’s just, amazing. And I need to use it in the real-world more to see what it’s like. Too bad I tested positive for COVID the day I got this phone.
The trade offs.
There’s two big trade offs I see going to the 13 mini - screen size and battery. Not cameras, not speaker quality, nada. Screen and battery. And typing on the phone.
The screen size is fundamentally the easier tradeoff to make. For a phone screen that is nearly one and a half inches smaller than the 13 Pro Max, honestly, it’s not too bad for my use case. Media consumption actually isn’t awful on this phone - you’d think that’d be the opposite with such a small phone, but honestly, it’s not too bad.
I wouldn’t watch a feature movie on this phone, but for YouTube and TikTok, my two primary media consumption sources, it’s great. No problems to complain about. Doing text reading - I consume a lot of Reddit and also read the news, it’s fine. You do lose a lot of screen real estate, and at times websites/articles will feel cramped. But honestly, it’s not too bad!
The other thing you lose is 120Hz ProMotion, but honestly, I’m able to easily transition between the two phones and get use to the 60Hz refresh rate in about a couple minutes. Apple does 60Hz super well, and Apple’s ProMotion really isn’t always running at 120Hz anyway.
The second complaint is, well, the typing experience. I use iPhones to communicate, and so with that, I do a lot of texting. And this is where I miss the iPhone 13 Pro Max in a big way. Despite its big size - the typing experience on the Pro Max is super pleasant. Big keys to hit, lots of spacing, and my thumbs aren’t getting in the way of each other while I type. I’ve banged out 500-1000 word documents on my Pro Max with no issues.
Whereas on the 13 mini, well, I don’t know if I could do that. I still need to get use to the smaller keyboard, but I don’t think I can get as fast or as efficient as I am on my 13 Pro Max. In short, it’s a smaller phone. The keys are smaller. My thumbs are getting in the way more often when typing letters in the middle of the keyboard. And it just feels weird to hold this phone 2 handed? But I think it’s a teething period and I need more time to get use to a small phone keyboard again.
The biggest complaint, and you might’ve seen this coming - is battery life.
For some context - I took the iPhone 13 mini off the charger at about 12 PM today, and have been hammering it with use on Wi-Fi for about 9 hours - with about 6-7 hours of screen on time. As I write this review, the phone is sitting at 11%.
My days are long. My day’s got another 4 or so hours to go before I call it quits and go to bed. To see this phone quit pretty early in the day, with what I’d consider to be above-average use is a bit disappointing.
Coming from the battery champ that is the 13 Pro Max, where I can easily start my day at 40-50% battery and basically get through the day, maybe turning on low power mode in the later hours, it’s quite the stark contrast. With the 13 Pro Max, I never really worried about charging my phone at night. My brief charging sessions when I got back to my room or had a moment to charge topped the phone up to the point where it was lasting.
And I don’t think that’s the case with the 13 Mini. To be clear - I did expect battery life to be shorter. I’d expect that I’d have to charge the phone every night, and maybe finish my day with 10-20% left. Not ideal, but also not the end of the world. And maybe when I get more of a chance to daily drive this phone, that might be the case!
But I’m starting to doubt it. As reviewers have mentioned, well, if you use this phone like a big phone you’re gonna kill it fast. I need to continue to test this phone, especially when I get out of isolation and can transfer my eSIM to the phone to really put it through its paces.
In short, you’re gonna have to change your usage habits (and hey - this might be for the better!) or this phone is gonna die before the end of the day.
So, where do we go from here?
In short - I’ll have to see. For now, I’m using my 13 mini like my primary phone with occasional breaks for the 13 Pro Max. At some point, I do want to transfer my eSIM to the mini and make it my primary phone to see how it goes.
I really love using the 13 mini. It’s so pleasant to use. Using it is just plain enjoyable, compared to the massive bricks of larger phones. But the battery truly is the limiting factor here. Apple could’ve made the phone a bit thicker, a bit heavier for more battery space, but I wonder if that would’ve just made it a denser brick.
Even if that experiment does fail, the 13 mini will still be in my life. Because this phone has a lot of great use cases that can break the annoyance of having to use my big phone during the day.
I’ve thought of a few use cases that this phone might actually be great for in the real world:
Parties! The 13 mini at parties, assuming you arrive at 100% battery, is great. Small, lightweight, and nimble, those are characteristics that you want when trying to use a phone while in a certain state that I shouldn’t explicitly mention because then I'm admitting I’m breaking the law. And, when on the dancefloor, your phone is not a brick. Plus, that little bit of clout for having a pink phone can go a long way. The only thing I worry about is texting on the phone while in that state. But, we’ll wait for times to come around and for real world testing to take the hand.
Walks! The 13 mini is the perfect walking phone. I’ve tried taking walks with my iPod touch but found that the lack of cellular connectivity and needing to keep up with critical conversations (like arranging dates and meetups on walks) hampers it. Additionally, the iPod lacks GPS, so I can’t get walking directions to wherever I want to walk. But the smaller screen of the 13 mini helps in keeping me off my phone during walks. And, for taking pretty sunset photos, the cameras are more than enough.
Quick trips out and about! More on the walks - sometimes, I need to take a quick trip to the mailroom, the store, or even the bathroom. It’s much easier to just grab the smaller phone so it’s not a huge brick that’s a pain to use when I’m carrying things in my hands. Another win for the mini’s one handed use.
Whenever I want to rock a pink phone - pink phones just look good man.
So, should you get the 13 mini?
Let’s assume the rumor mill is correct, in that this is the last iPhone mini. Should you get this mini phone now, and use it, even if you go back to a bigger phone in a year or two?
Probably not - unless you have a bigger phone you can fall back to when needed. Again - the 13 mini is a wonderful phone with a novel idea I love. But most people use their phone as their primary computing devices. Communication, video watching, productivity, scheduling, web browsing, all activities that are benefitted massively from larger screens and bigger batteries. And, web experiences lately have been designed around larger phones. You will feel the squeeze on the mini a decent bit while using it.
Now of course, for me, that isn’t an issue. I can just hop over to my 13 Pro Max and continue onward. But that will not be everyone’s experience - especially if it’s your primary phone.
I think the 13 mini works great as a secondary phone. Or a primary phone if you have a secondary big phone to easily switch back to. You definitely need to use it for a week or two to really see if the mini life can work for you, and I’ll definitely report back on if this is the case for myself personally.
Expect an update of this review in a couple weeks time. I first need to clear isolation.