I’ve spent a year with the iPhone 12 mini. It’s my least favourite iPhone ever. Some friends of mine love it. I basically hate it.
There are three reasons I’m moving to the opposite end of the iPhone size spectrum next week:
- Battery life — Though my iPhone sits on a charger for most of my workday, any non-workday is a truly awful experience. I can simply carry my iPhone around for 4 hours and come back to the battery 25% depleted.
- Typing experience — You’ve heard me say this before. I need to be able to type messages and emails on my iPhone. The 12 mini is not conducive for typing. It’s conducive for one-handed holding. It’s also conducive for thumb-cramping if you have to type a sentence longer than 280 characters.
- Camera System — There are two elements baked into the camera system at the Pro iPhone level that I’ve been missing all year: the third tele camera and the LiDAR Scanner. I miss the tele camera far more than I ever imagined. And the LiDAR Scanner, well, I have misplaced my tape measure at home. The Measure app is hot garbage on the 12 mini and often results in me waving my iPhone around like a moron attempting to calibrate the phone for measurement.
Long story short: I am excited to be able to use my iPhone again. Whether it’s battery is dead, or my thumbs cramp up, or I’m having my phone around like some magic wand, I dread having to pull my iPhone out of my pocket right now.
I expect I’ll hate carrying the Pro Max iPhone. It’s huge. I played with one last week and it’s an airplane wing.
But I also hear there’s a new Apple Watch around the corner. Maybe that device can help with the Pro Max’s carrying pains.