Iphone 14 | Why I’m skipping the iPhone 14 and keeping my Mini for another year | apple iphone

Jason Snell

I’m not here to bury the iPhone Mini, I’m here to sing the praises of it. If the rumors are true, the iPhone 13 Mini will be the last of its kind and will be replaced by a larger iPhone 14 Max this fall. As the owner of an iPhone 13 Mini, this makes me sad.

It seems not enough people share my love for the iPhone 13 Mini for Apple to give it an upgrade in the 14th generation. Nonetheless, the iPhone 13 Mini is a great device. And so great that this isn’t the last time we’ll see the design, I suspect.

Kudos to the little one

There’s no denying it: people love big smartphones. The iPhone entered a long-lasting period of growth after Apple scaled it up for the first time in its sixth generation. The sales figures don’t lie and I can’t deny that as a lover of small smartphones I belong to a fringe group among iPhone users.

But… do people really like big smartphones? I think they like big screens that show more information and they can watch movies bigger. I don’t think they like the extra weight, the extra space that big devices take up in (trouser) pockets. But the big, bright screen is worth it.

Year after year I get to use the new iPhones, if only briefly to test them. And for the past two years, I’ve kept going back to the iPhone Mini.

For one, it’s a non-Pro iPhone. Reasonable people might disagree, but I find the Pro design in the 12th and 13th generation iPhones to be worse than the regular ones. From the vibrant colors on the back to the anodized aluminum frame, I’d pick the iPhone 13 Mini over a bland iPhone 13 Pro anytime.

With a height of 13.2 cm and a width of 6.4 cm, it is small and therefore fits well in my hand and in my pocket. Still, it has a 5.4-inch screen with enough space for any app. The look is based on the fifth iPhone generation, my favorite generation. However, the iPhone Mini’s screen is significantly larger than the iPhone 5’s because it uses Face ID instead of Touch ID.

Admittedly, the battery life of the iPhone Mini is significantly shorter than other iPhones, but I would like to point out that Apple has done a good job with the battery life of all iPhone 13 models. The battery life of the iPhone 12 Mini left a lot to be desired, to be honest. The iPhone 13 Mini? No problem .

Sure, if you’re using an iPhone Mini, you’re missing out on some of the key features of the Pro models. I’m currently using an iPhone 13 Pro with a beta of iOS 16 and I’m constantly reminded that the cheaper devices don’t have ProMotion or an additional camera. And yet: whenever I hold the larger smartphone in my hand or put it in my trouser pocket, the size bothers me. Why carry a brick if you don’t have to?

It’s dead, Jim

But that’s not the point, is it? Finally, the iPhone 14 Mini is a device that will never see the light of day. So after praising the Mini, I have to bury it. But do I?

First of all, I would like to point out that only the Pro models of the iPhone 14 series should get the new A16 processor. As a result, the normal iPhone 14 models will have to do without speculative features such as the always-on display and may even be just as fast as the current iPhone generation.

I am sure that Apple will give the iPhone 14 models a few other improvements to make them stand out from the iPhone 13 in terms of specifications. But at the bottom end, it looks like the iPhone 14 is the least spectacular upgrade in years. And if that means the iPhone 13 Mini is more or less a current smartphone for another year, then that’s enough for me.

And then there’s the inevitable future: I’m sure the iPhone Mini design will return. One possibility is that Apple would switch back and forth between models, releasing an iPhone Mini one year and a Max the next. It’s also conceivable that Apple might bring the Mini back every few years, as it clearly has an entourage – albeit none particularly large.

Then there’s the iPhone SE, which only recently entered its third generation. Using the iPhone Mini as the basis for the next iPhone SE would make perfect sense as the current iPhone Mini outperforms the iPhone SE in every way. Although it’s a bit smaller, the screen is bigger, it supports Face ID and it has a secondary camera on the back.

The truth is, the iPhone Mini is just too good a product and size for Apple to ignore entirely. And yet it saddens me that releasing a new one every year doesn’t seem to be popular enough. But I just don’t think it will go away forever. In the meantime, I’ll keep my iPhone 13 Mini and await the Mini’s inevitable return.

Here we have summarized all the rumors about the iPhone 14 for you. We’ve also analyzed the speculated specs and tell you why the new iPhones are worth waiting for. And if you want to know in general when the next Apple keynotes are happening, check out this post.

This article was first published by colleagues from the

Macworld

and was translated from English.