[CephalopodMD]

Also still rocking a 13 mini. There are dozens of us! Dozens!

(Also to those who say not enough people wanted a mini phone to be worth producing: I submit the case of Prego chunky pasta sauce. Not many people want a chunky pasta sauce, but you sell a whole lot more pasta sauce in total if you sell both regular and chunky pasta sauce. Malcolm Gladwell has a TED talk about this.)

[TACD]

My pet theory about why the Minis sold poorly is that the 12 Mini was released just a few months after the SE 2; I suspect a lot of the would-be Mini purchasers had just bought an SE 2 instead (not knowing the Mini was just around the corner), and are also not a demographic interested in upgrading their phone every year.

[mrweasel]

Didn't the SE models sell notoriously bad as well?

There are always a bunch of us who wants a smaller phone, but the sales number indicates that we are the minority.

To some extend I also think it explains the increasingly thin phones. With the increases in screen size, they need to make the phones thinner, otherwise it would feel like a brick in your pocket.

[HumblyTossed]

I always point out that the minis were a billion dollar product. Most companies would DIE for a billion dollar product.

[brightbeige]

My theory is rather about battery life:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588733

[port11]

My pet theory is that having to charge the phone twice a day was a deal breaker. We wanted small, not "impossibly thin" and always dead.

[nchase]

Agree, and as an ex-mini user, I wish this was the world we lived in.

I presume the problem is that iPhones are a lot more expensive to produce than tomato sauce, and it's a lot more difficult to get rid of the ones that people don't buy.

[swivelmaster]

I would go for a chunky iPhone.

[logicalfails]

I'm trying to hang on to my 13 mini until next year, when hopefully Apple will have figured out Apple Intelligence and upgrade the phone hardware to run it. But I'm worried my 13 mini won't make it that long. It's starting to struggle with even basic apps and lags just reading news articles. Battery is still at over 80% though

[wffurr]

My 13 mini works great. Just got a replacement on Swappa after dropping mine in a lake.

What’s lagging for you? I haven’t noticed anything even remotely slow on this phone.

[throwuxiytayq]

> It's starting to struggle with even basic apps and lags just reading news articles

Not my experience, but I tend to blame the web rather than my phone when things get laggy. I estimate that my 13 is about in the middle of its life, barring unexpected rapid deceleration events.

[debian3]

My battery is at 80% after 2 years. Mine is still on AppleCare+. I always do express replacement so I get a « new » one. Hopefully my battery reach 79% soon.

[cde-v]

I kept seeing people mention the 13 mini but I always thought the 12 mini was the last mini. Just looked it up and I see why now, seems like the 13 mini is barely different from the 12 mini.

[p00dles]

I had the 13 mini and now the 12 mini and the 13 mini was noticeably better - battery life, camera, screen brightness (big difference when using phone on a bike for navigation)

[buildsjets]

They added just enough battery capacity to make it thru the day. Thats about it.

[armen52]

The CPU in the 13 Mini is something like 20-30% more power efficient, making it much more viable given the small battery capacity of the phone.

[amai]

Iphone 13 mini has a bigger battery. This is quite relevant, because the Iphone 12 mini battery life is quite bad.

[zahma]

Speaking of dozens. I’m on a 12 Mini and will be hard pressed to give it up. I also replaced the battery recently and am still quite pleased with its performance!

[tate_thurston]

I’m one of the dozens on an iPhone 13 mini waiting for the next mini release. Before that I was on the iPhone 8

[veunes]

Apple could easily keep a "mini" around as the lightweight option for folks who don't want a pocket tablet

[NetMageSCW]

Hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in design, engineering and manufacturing is not easily.

[mrits]

just gave up mine last month.