It’s not the Mini, it’s me.
Nearly five years after it launched, the 13 Mini is still the best phone ever made. That hasn’t changed; it’s just that I changed. And as painful as it is to admit this, after using it again for a couple of weeks, I think it’s time to put my iPhone 13 Mini to rest.
The Mini is an underdog. An outlier. It’s a weird little phone that Apple tried to sell twice, couldn’t, and promptly gave up on. If you pick it up after using any modern phone it’s laughably small. A tiny baby phone in a world of Maxes and Ultras.
But small phones are so nice. I can use the Mini one-handed without fumbling around trying to reach my thumb across the screen. I can carry it in my coat pocket and actually forget it’s there. It fits the front pocket of my jeans, or an evening clutch, with room to spare. They quite literally don’t make ’em like that anymore; the Samsung Galaxy S26 is the smallest mainstream Android phone you can find these days, and it’s a full 18mm taller than the Mini.
The 13 Mini was already over a year out of date when I bought it in 2023. When Apple introduced the iPhone 14 lineup in fall 2022 without a successor to the Mini, I figured it was my last chance to buy a new small phone before they vanished off the face of the Earth. This turned out to be true, unfortunately.
Even being the small phone that it is, the Mini is a surprisingly complete package. My 13 Mini has MagSafe — something that the much more recent 16E lacks. There’s also an ultrawide camera, which you won’t find on the brand-new iPhone Air. And my personal favorite feature is a real throwback: a physical SIM tray.
In fact, that has been one of its most valuable assets over the past few years. It acts as a kind of bridge when I’m using an Android phone with a physical SIM and need to switch to an eSIM-only iPhone. The most reliable method I’ve found for this maneuver is putting my physical SIM in the 13 Mini, converting it to an eSIM, and transferring it to whatever new iPhone I’m testing. Is this a weird, niche reason to love a phone? Yeah, but also, the Mini is a weird, niche phone.
I realized a few weeks ago that I hadn’t used my Mini for a significant stretch of time in, I don’t know, months? When I test a phone I go all in, putting my own phone line on it and using it as my only device. I usually get to use my 13 Mini as a treat in between reviews, but it was gathering dust. I’d been busy testing out a lot of other phones, but I was also trying to delay the inevitable — the moment when I’d have to reckon with my Mini’s mortality.
My suspicion was correct — I think this Mini’s time has come. But what’s surprising to me is that its comparatively minuscule screen isn’t my main problem. It’s the battery. My 13 Mini reports that its battery is still at 97 percent of its total capacity; makes sense, since I don’t use the phone all the time. But it barely gets through a full day now, even when most of that day is spent at home on Wi-Fi. I took it on a work trip last week and had to plug it in as soon as I got to my hotel room. I can’t tolerate battery anxiety.
Big phones have turned me into a monster
I’d like to blame Liquid Glass for chewing through my poor Mini’s battery, but I don’t think that’s the main culprit. I think it’s me. I’ve adapted to using big phones with big, new batteries and committing all manner of battery crimes. I’ll leave the screen on to check a recipe while cooking dinner, and create a hotspot instead of asking a barista for the Wi-Fi password. I also watch a lot more video than I used to. A couple of years ago I’m pretty sure I could scroll through my Instagram feed and see mostly photos — now it’s roughly 90 percent vertical video from accounts I don’t follow. And I keep scrolling! Like a trained monkey! Without any regard for my battery! Big phones have turned me into a monster.
There’s also the Lightning Cable Problem. The 13 Mini’s Lightning port isn’t an issue most days. I charge it via MagSafe; I use it with wireless earbuds. But the cable we use for CarPlay is USB-C, and if I need an emergency charging cable or pair of wired earbuds, USB-C is a lot easier to find these days than Lightning. And I have no idea where I put my Lightning headphone adapter. I’ve become used to the convenience of one cable and one set of accessories that works with all the phones I test, and tracking down my Lightning cable stuff feels like a step backward.
Still, the Mini means too much to me to just let it go. I won’t trade it in for whatever pittance Apple would give me for it at this point. I’m going to keep using it here and there; when I can get away with it in the lulls between work trips. It’s going to keep faithfully converting physical SIMs for me until Apple stops supplying it with new OS versions.
Some of the Mini’s qualities live on in the iPhone Air, though its 6.5-inch screen hardly makes it a small phone. And some of the small players like Unihertz are doing their best to keep the small-phone dream alive. But I doubt we’ll see anything like the Mini from a major phone maker anytime soon. So when it’s time to fully retire mine, I’ve got just the place for it: on a shelf right next to my pink 4GB iPod Mini. They just don’t make them like they used to.
