The smallest and least expensive of Apple’s 2021 smartphone lineup, the iPhone 13 mini (starting at $699) is basically an iPhone 13 in a smaller size, with a smaller battery. That latter part is what will likely prevent the mini from being a best-seller, although it’s absolutely worth a look if you’re shopping for a small phone. We recommend the standard iPhone 13 to most people, as it offers the most potent blend of performance and battery for the price, but if you’re willing to trade a bit of battery life for size, the iPhone 13 mini is the most powerful small phone you can buy today.
What Happened to the iPhone 12 mini?
For years now, there’s been a collective moan in certain corners of the internet about the steadily expanding size of phones. Smaller phones are less addictive, the narrative goes. They’re easier to use in one hand, and they fit better in tight pockets. It’s easier to take photos with one hand, especially selfies, and it’s easier to hold small phones to your head to make calls.
At least, that’s how the dream goes. The iPhone 12 mini landed in the market as the smallest flagship smartphone, at a delightful 5.2 by 2.5 by 0.3 inches (HWD). And then nobody bought it; it was, by far, the worst-selling of the iPhone 12 lineup.
The reason? At least some of it was battery life. The iPhone 12 mini had the shortest battery life of the 12 series, and especially when faced with the power drain of 5G networks, iPhone buyers fled to larger, more solid cells. That lesson is part of why I’m recommending the standard-size iPhone 13 over the mini this year.
Body: Svelte and Satisfying
The iPhone 13 mini is still the smallest and lightest premium smartphone on the market. At 5.2 by 2.5 by 0.3 inches and 5.0 ounces, it’s significantly smaller and lighter than the iPhone 13 (5.8 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches, 6.1 ounces), and close enough to the iPhone 12 mini that it will fit in some of the same cases. Having a smaller smartphone like this really does give you a different sense of how and when to use your phone. It’s more of a tool, and less of an obsession.
The main differences between the 13 mini and the 12 mini (like with base 13 and 12), are a smaller “notch” on the front and slightly larger, diagonally arrayed cameras on the back. There are five color options, including blue, pink, red, “midnight” (a blue so dark it can read as black), and “starlight” (a subtle off-white, like eggshell).
We got a “midnight” mini, and let me tell you, it’s a bit of a mind trip. I was sitting with our photographer with the two of us asking, is it black or not black? It’s black enough to give the initial impression of being black, and then you think, there’s something off about this. As I said, it’s a trip, but it’s also a very cool color.
The 13 mini’s 5.4-inch OLED display has 2,340-by-1,080-pixel resolution (like the 12 mini’s), making it slightly denser than the iPhone 13’s 6.1-inch display, but with fewer overall pixels because it’s smaller. It has a wide color gamut and Apple’s True Tone color management, and Apple says that maximum typical brightness has been ramped up from 625 cd/m2 on the iPhone 12 mini to 800 cd/m2 here. I can’t see it with my eyes; I’m waiting for some testing results from DisplayMate Labs to verify Apple’s move here.
PCMag-Recommended Apple iPhone 13 Accessories:PCMag-Recommended Apple iPhone 13 Accessories:Apple AirTagApple AirTagApple AirPods ProApple AirPods ProApple Leather Case With MagSafeApple Leather Case With MagSafeAnker Nano 20W ChargerAnker Nano 20W Charger
Battery and Performance: A Step Up
The iPhone 13 mini has significantly better battery life than the iPhone 12 mini does; in our battery rundown test, it did about as well as the standard iPhone 12. That’s going to push the mini for some people from an “oh no” to a “might buy.”
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And that battery life comes running all of the same features as its larger sibling, with no throttling, reduced camera quality, or lesser signal performance. The mini really does hold its own in the iPhone family.
All that said, the mini still has the shortest battery life of the various iPhone 13 models, and it’s the only one where, over the course of several days, sometimes I’d pick it up and it would need to be recharged. So goes the small phone life.
As for everything else, the iPhone 13 mini handles 4G and 5G; it runs iOS 15 on the new A15 processor; and it has two 12-megapixel cameras on the back, along with one on the front. In all of these ways it’s just like its sibling the iPhone 13, so turn to my main iPhone 13 review for more details.
Who Should Get the mini?
I don’t want to minimize Apple’s achievement in putting this sort of power in a phone so small and light. There’s really nothing like it from any of the Android vendors on the US market; the Samsung Galaxy S21 is the size of the standard iPhone 13, not the 13 mini. Technically, the Sony Xperia 5 II is out there at 2.6 inches wide, but it’s much more expensive than the mini and doesn’t have 5G or wireless charging.
I can certainly cut some other options down here. At $699, the iPhone 13 mini is a better choice than a $699 iPhone 12, and it’s worth the premium over the $599 iPhone 12 mini because of better battery life. I’d even go down so far as to say to get this over the $499 iPhone 11, because our tests show better battery life than the 11, and 5G will genuinely help with coverage and signal quality over the next two years.
That decision shifts with the $399 iPhone SE, simply because the SE is so much less expensive and is therefore in an entirely different class. The SE is less powerful all around, but it’s still a delightful entry-level phone for new or light users.
But I’m ambivalent about recommending the iPhone 13 mini as an upgrade simply because I was so burned by my recommendation of the 12 mini. Yes, the 13 mini’s battery is better—it lasts longer than the popular iPhone 12’s battery, in our tests. But all of the other iPhone 13 models have even better batteries. So if you can afford an iPhone 13, I say get the iPhone 13.
