iPhone 13 Mini Review: One big upgrade

It might exist mini in size, merely the iPhone xiii Mini excels thanks to an first-class camera, quality display and improved battery life.

Introduction

The iPhone xiii Mini might exist the smallest entry in the make’s 2022 lineup of phones, but it doesn’t lose as well many features when compared to the larger iPhone thirteen.

You take to commend Apple for continuing to deliver a flagship phone that’s far dinkier than the competition, despite the previous model non existence quite the ‘hitting’ anticipated.

This time around there are big upgrades to the camera and, nearly important, battery life. Exercise they make for a better telephone?

Design and screen

• A 20% smaller notch
• Brighter OLED display
• Same IP68 rating and Ceramic Shield as the iPhone 12

The iPhone 13 Mini looks simply similar the regular iPhone thirteen – simply noticeably smaller. This is for those people who think most new phones are too big, too heavy and don’t easily fit into a pocket or pocket-size bag.

Whether the iPhone xiii Mini size appeals to you volition actually depend on personal preference. I observe it a petty too small for much of what I use my phone for – and, if you’re big into mobile gaming, video watching or the like, then the 13 Mini’s form is unlikely to be for y’all. On the other manus, if you want a phone that can easily slip in a pocket and exist held in one hand and then the iPhone 13 Mini is the best phone effectually.

My colleague Tom has been using the 12 Mini since its release and he said it has inverse how he uses phones in general. The smaller size makes it easier to pull out on busy public send and encourages him to take more pictures. This really is a phone you need to try out to run into whether it suits.

In terms of bodily size, and then, it’s similar to the iPhone SE 2 and iPhone 8. But, of class, the larger display does enable you to cram a lot more than on the screen. If you’re coming from an iPhone 8 or older, y’all’ll feel at dwelling house.

Size aside, the design mirrors that of the larger iPhone 13 – Apple shifted heavily from its curved look with the iPhone 12, so information technology’southward no surprise to run across the design carried forward for a 2nd year. The phone has matte aluminium sides that are flat, very much similar the iPhone 5 or original iPhone SE, while the back is glass.

There are three obvious changes to the design visible here over the iPhone 12 Mini. Offset is the larger, more than prominent photographic camera module that houses the new (and vastly improved) dual camera on the back. It’s bigger, simply the benefits are articulate when you start shooting. The other notable change is on the brandish, where the size of the notch has been reduced by around 20%. The notch feels the most egregious on the Mini phones, since it takes upwardly more space. The smaller size is therefore welcome, but I tin’t see it changing anyone’southward overall stance of the notch.

Considering Apple has added a notch on the latest MacBook Pros, I really can’t see their removal from phones anytime presently. It feels now more like a design trait of these products, and while at that place might be an iPhone 14 without a notch, I think the cheaper devices volition stick with it for a few more than years.

The concluding change is the new range of colours in which the iPhone 13 Mini is available. Starlight feels similar the headline hue, calculation a hint of golden to a silverish torso. There’due south a very deep Production(Ruby) model, also.

Joining those colours is Midnight, a
very
night blue that looks almost black (it’due south the one yous’ll see pictured in this review), plus a lighter blue and lite pink. This isn’t quite the standout selection of colours nosotros’ve seen recently; I’thousand disappointed that at that place’s no minty light-green or purple option – both of which I really liked on the iPhone 12 serial. Still, it’s a decent selection of colours and it’southward nice to run across and so much diversity on offer.

Apple calls the glass covering on both the front and dorsum of the device ‘Ceramic Shield’, and after using an iPhone 12 for a year now, information technology’southward certainly fair to say it’s more rugged than it looks. You’ll probable add a example and screen protector on the phone anyway, simply it’due south always welcome to know it’s fairly durable without – every bit long as yous’re careful. The iPhone 13 Mini also comes with an IP68 water-resistance rating.

Where the iPhone 13 and xiii Mini diverge from the Pro serial is with their display. While all models use the OLED tech for deep blacks and loftier dissimilarity, the cheaper duo ditch the ProMotion adaptive refresh rate tech for the standard 60Hz panel that’s been present on every previous iPhone.

A faster 120Hz is something that’s difficult to switch away from once you’ve spent time with it. Scrolling, swiping and gaming all feel super-smooth; it only makes animations and movements so much faster. But the iPhone 13 Mini has i of the meliorate 60Hz screens I have tested, so it’s still perfectly adequate.

Refresh rate aside, the residual of the screen is great. At 5.4 inches it’s relatively dinky, and so isn’t actually ideal for gaming or movie streaming. Simply if you do try your manus at both, the results are bully, thanks to the high levels of effulgence in HDR video streaming.

Photographic camera

• A duo of new 12-megapixel sensors
• New diagonal orientation
• Focus on video with a new Cinematic way

The iPhone 13 Mini might very well have the finest camera of this size I’ve e’er used.

The master camera sensor hither offers a significant upgrade in terms of size, with larger pixels and a faster lens, both of which allow far more light to striking the sensor. This is paired with a 12-megapixel ultra-wide, with a 120-caste field of view.

The main sensor as well benefits from the aforementioned sensor-shift stabilisation first introduced in concluding year’due south iPhone 12 Pro Max. It’s certainly impressive that the tech from a phone that cost upwardly of £g/$k is available, just a year afterward, in a model costing virtually half that.

The biggest improvements are felt when the light is depression, either outdoors or in dimly lit confined and restaurants. The iPhone 13 Mini doesn’t forcefulness itself into the dedicated low-light Night mode as much, turning instead to that bigger sensor and its natural skills. Photos taken at night retain much of the detail from the twenty-four hour period, with minimal racket and fantastically accurate exposure.

In easier weather condition, such as well-lit environments, the pictures pop with particular and a lovely natural stop. They’re on par with those captured by the Pixel 6 and, for my tastes, are a step ahead of those taken with the Samsung Galaxy S21 series – fifty-fifty the Ultra.

If you lot want to tweak the look of snaps, the new Photography Styles provides more command than I’ve ever seen on an iPhone. At that place are distinct styles for vibrancy and rich dissimilarity, along with options for making snaps warmer or cooler.

Rich contrast, for instance, pulls out more than of the highlights and shadows, giving images a wait that isn’t besides unlike to those taken on the Pixel vi. These styles aren’t only filters, they’re deeper than that – and, as a result, you can’t remove them once the paradigm has been snapped with them.

Ultra-wide snaps are great, too, and I still love the versatility this photographic camera brings. However, what could do with an update is the front camera, which hasn’t received much in the style of dear for a few years. Selfies are fine, but they’re a little short on detail – and the colours don’t quite pack the dial of images shot with the rear cameras.

What the camera is missing is whatsoever sort of optical zoom, with that third sensor reserved for the Pro models. The digital zoom pales in comparison to the Pixel 6, and I rarely institute myself using it.

Video remains a strong signal, and if you’re keen on picking upwards a telephone to capture footage then the iPhone 13 series is, merely put, the best there is. Video is well stabilised, with natural colours and plenty of options for frame charge per unit and resolution. Cinematic mode brings across the Portrait mode from the stills camera, just with less effectiveness. You tin can record Cinematic mode in HDR Dolby Vision up to 1080p at 30fps, far lower than the 4K 60fps maximum in the standard video modes.

Performance

• A15 Bionic powers the phone
• Wider 5G band back up
• 4GB of RAM, 128GB base storage

What makes the iPhone 13 Mini such a unique device is that it doesn’t sacrifice performance to attain its dinky size.

At the heart of the device you’ll find the same A15 Bionic chipset as not but the iPhone 13, but the iPhone 13 Pro Max – and this leads to exceptional speed in every task. Inside the chip is a half-dozen-core CPU, four-core GPU and a 16-cadre neural engine for AI tasks. The base storage at present sits at 128GB, double the 64GB of the 12 Mini.

Just claiming the A15 Bionic spits out good benchmark scores and performs well twenty-four hours-to-day is underplaying it and the bulk of modern silicon. Similar the Pixel six and its Tensor SoC (system-on-chip), the application is more than notable in the areas of camera processing, auto learning and AI.

The A15 Bionic powers the Cinematic way with its focus racking and constantly irresolute mistiness effects, aslope the ridiculously useful Live Text feature, which tin pull addresses and telephone numbers from your photo library.

It also makes its presence felt in gaming, comfortably handling all the big titles at maximum settings. I’ve been churning through a number of Apple Arcade titles during the review period, and while the screen isn’t the ideal size for gaming, everything performs fantastically well.

In that location’s a wider selection of 5G bands thanks to a new 5G modem. USA versions of the phone also support mmWave 5G – a faster version of the tech that simply properly works when you’re very close to the masts. mmWave isn’t bachelor in the Uk, nor many other regions yet, so the tech is simply just missing from these iPhone models.

Battery life

• Big improvements over the iPhone 12 Mini
• No charger included in the box
• Wireless MagSafe and Qi charging likewise supported

If there was ane major criticism I had with the iPhone 12 Mini, it was battery life. Endurance was pretty weak; I often barely made it through a working day without having to reach for a charger.

Thankfully, that’southward no longer the example here – although the iPhone 13 Mini still ranks as the worst iPhone xiii model for battery life.

The best mode to describe the bombardment life here is that it lasts merely near as long as the regular-sized iPhone 12 from 2022. I’ve been wanting to properly exam this battery, and during my month of using the phone every solar day, in the principal it has but about seen me through to bedtime – although information technology’s cut information technology fine, close to 3-4% by the time I plug it in. That’s a couple of extra hours of use per solar day over the iPhone 12 Mini.

This is a welcome improvement; all the same, with all iPhone models receiving significant battery boosts this year, the Mini remains the just one to not get in into a second twenty-four hour period of use. For nearly people this volition exist absolutely fine – but if you’d like to exist in a position where y’all don’t have to worry about battery life so you might be better opting for the slightly bigger, just nevertheless insufficiently small, iPhone 13.

In a more than controlled test, the iPhone 13 Mini only merely lags backside its larger sibling. An hr of HDR Netflix at 100% brightness took the regular iPhone xiii downward nine%, while the same test on the Mini took information technology downwardly 10%.

Charging speeds volition depend on the type of charger you’re using. The iPhone 13 Mini supports up to 20W fast wired charging, and using one of these you’ll get to around 50% in one-half an hour. You don’t get a charger in the box, though, and I’d recommend picking upward a 20W capable USB-C plug since using an older iPhone 5W charger will take a long time to get to 100%.

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