I would prefer the telephoto lens to the the warped wide angle (which I find useless). I also miss out on the high refresh rate display (for the 12 year none of the phones had it).
The mini is probably my favorite iPhone design of all time. It’s basically a 5 (my previous favorite) with a full screen display.
It’s a shame we’ll lose a small phone that doesn’t compromise on features this year - I don’t want an SE.
I somewhat regret the 12 mini, not because of the size (or even battery - it's fine for my daily use), but the face ID. As others have said, it's just too interruptive. (well, they didn't say that word exactly, but it's what I think).
Rumors I'd read last year would be that a 13 or 14 would have a 'button' underneath the glass screen, so we'd effectively have a 'home' button without the need for a physical button. Not in the 13, and I've not heard about it in the 14 (yet?) but would welcome that. The touch-id flow I had grown used to was so ... useful and fluid. Part of the reason I don't think I recognized it as much was 2020/2021 - so much of my regular life was thrown out of whack (travel/meetings/etc) that the impact of moving to face ID wasn't all that noticeable. As we're 'returning to normal' more and more, and I'm 'out' more, the day to day impact is more noticeable.
If a 14 mini came out with Touch ID I’d be all over it, but for now I think I’m going back to the SE.
Lightning places the springs inside the port, instead of on the cable. So, when the springs wear out, you need a new phone instead of a new cable.
Lightning directly exposes the pins on the cable to the environment and corrosion, which is not a better design for durability and longevity.
I have no idea where you're getting the idea that USB-C is more fragile than Lightning. It isn't, although this seems to be a persistent belief. All evidence I've seen points to the opposite conclusion, at least as far as the port is concerned, and everyone should care a lot more about the port than the cable. Ports are much more expensive to replace than cables. We're also not talking about the flimsy microUSB connector, which was rife with problems.
The USB-C port has also been repeatedly proven to be small enough to fit into the current crop of iPhones, so why does the minuscule difference in size matter? It isn't the limiting factor for anything.
But, none of that really matters. What matters is that approximately all of my other devices use USB-C, but I have to either carry around a Lightning cable or a wireless charger just for my phone. Why? It's incredibly annoying to need yet another type of cable, and Lightning isn't better at anything. If Lightning was so much better, Apple should have pushed for it to become the standard instead of USB-C, as Apple has been part of the USB-IF for a very long time, and Apple would have used it on their laptops instead of USB-C... but they didn't do either of those things. Even Apple is moving away from Lightning, first on their iPads, but it is clear they're going to do this across the board over time.
Even worse, Lightning is limited to USB 2.0 speeds on iPhone. Apple introduces iPhones with a terabyte of storage and the ability to record massive 4k ProRes video files... but how are you supposed to get those multi-gigabyte files onto a computer for editing? Lightning at slower-than-WiFi speeds? WiFi at 600Mbps instead of USB-C at 10Gbps? None of it makes any sense.
It is way past time for Apple to switch the iPhone to USB-C, but it apparently won't happen until next year.
In practice I've never had a Lightning port fail while the USB-C port on my Macbook loosened so much that it wouldn't hold any cable.
I've never personally dealt with loose USB-C or lightning ports on any of my devices, which is why I pointed out that a technically inferior design just doesn't matter at all here, but you can find plenty examples online of people complaining about Lightning ports too if we just want to talk anecdata.
In practice, they're both fine for charging devices. Even if Lightning were technically superior at charging devices, which it doesn't seem to be, it still wouldn't matter. Lightning sucks for other reasons, like requiring me to bring an additional cable on trips, and not supporting USB 3 speeds on devices that have enormous storage and where Apple intentionally helps you generate enormous files that need to be transferred. That's why I placed so much emphasis on these points in my comment, and said none of the earlier stuff mattered.
As a side note, there is nothing technical limiting Lightning to USB2 speeds. It's fully capable of being adapted to USB3 speeds if Apple wants to. I would agree with you that Apple should have done this by now on the iPhone. I imagine they will. But as for how we're supposed to move big files around? AirDrop does a great job at this and is extremely fast, and requires no setup, and doesn't require that you have the right cable around, plus you can even AirDrop to many folks at once. I use this all the time in music rehearsals and for sharing photos or video.
AirDrop is actually so fast that the bottleneck is NOT the full speed of the WiFi chip that is present; it's usually the speed of the SSD or SD card you're reading from. AirDrop is blisteringly fast. Especially on newer devices with WiFi 6 hardware.
Side note 2: recent iPads actually do have USB3-capable Lightning ports.
http://www.josh-ua.co/blog/2015/3/15/usb-c-dimensions-size-c...
Having everything USB-C just makes travel so much easier.
I had:
- a USB C cord that only supports power but up to 100W
- a USB C cord that supports power up to 60W and data at USB2 speeds. But didn't work with my USB C powered portable display. Because it didn't support video.
- a USB C cord that only supported power up to 60W and data and video.
I'm usually traveling with:
- My MacBook Pro 16 inch (USB C)
- Mouse/Keyboard (lightning)
- iPad Air 3rd Gen (lightning)
- iPhone 12 (lightning)
- AirPods Pro (lightning)
- Beats Flex (they hang around my neck and I don't have to worry about them falling out on the plane if I dose off) USB C
- a four in one wireless charger that I sit by my bed at the hotel. (USB C).
- a Anker battery pack (USB-C)
- portable monitor (USB C)
- Watch - weird Apple proprietary wireless charging.
But now I only travel with these cords for most of my devices:
Female USB A/USB C on one end and USB C/lightning on the other end. They support data up to 480Mbps and power up to 60W. They are $13.00. They are cheap and not too thick.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B092ZT8CJ9
But for a truly "universal cable", I have three of these:
- Female USB A/USB C on one end
- lightning, USB C, and Micro USB on the other end
- 10GBps data transfer
- supports video over USB C
- Supports charging up to 100W.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B093YVRHMB
They are like $35 and are much thicker and a little unwieldy and I don't need them just for charging anything but my computer and connecting my secondary display.
BTW, this is my portable USB Monitor
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B095GG31KX/
I can't use my iPad as a second monitor using the native ability in MacOs because of corporate software. I found out later that I could use Duet.
When I do succumb to my own weakness and look at something on the tiny screen, I often think, meh, this isn't great, just do something else!
But this showed me that phone performance is no longer a reason to upgrade, so I’ll probably hold on to this one even longer than I kept the 7 Plus.
Probably the apps I use just aren’t CPU bound, or they need other optimizations to make them faster. Which probably makes me like most people. My wife is still happily using an iPhone 8 and she will probably replace it only when it completely goes out. Since phones are so durable now—the home button doesn’t even wear out—that might take years more.
Down? What does the mini have that the SE doesn’t?
I agonized over this dumb thing but am terribly happy with my mini, in ways I haven’t been since the original SE.
I switched from an iphone 7 to a 13 mini and I dearly miss touch ID. It worked a lot better than face id IMO. When the new SE was announced just months after I got the mini I was pretty bummed.
The only thing missing is the zoom. Wish they replaced the useless 0.5x lens with the 2x. Everything else about this phone is perfect
But the 0.5x very frequently enables indoor shots that are impossible to get otherwise. Because you can't back up for a wider view if you're next to a wall.
Apple chose well.
Except for the main reason I ever used it: depth of field and more natural proportions.
Digital zoom can’t do that and no portrait mode is not the same.
On my old phone I would often switch to 2x and walk away from the subject to get a better photo.
Here’s a good example of how faces change when shot with different focal lengths: https://imgur.io/gallery/ZKTWi
I do wonder if the battery will hold up over time, especially as I start going to conferences and other all-day events. It was a non-issue during the first year, when I was almost always at home.
It's a lazy, bad name but it is objectively a great product. It is extremely successful.
Dismissing it because it doesn't work for you is as absurd as dismissing shoes too big for you or pants made from a material you don't like. Other people do, the world is not about you.
The Max is only stupid if you're in the "phone is a phone" group.
For the "my phone is my main computing device" people it's a really good device.
I'm trying to workout which one to get, way too many options in 2022.
I do a lot of outdoor stuff, not sure if I want the weight of the pro, is it worth it?
The zoom lens. Worth the price alone.
This is how I feel, 3 years later, after getting the 11 Pro in 2019. If I do upgrade this year, I'll give it to my dad, and he'll probably use it till it breaks :)
I kept it for 3 months, and then traded it in for a Pro. It turns out that the world has moved on. Web pages are getting harder to read on small screens. I had to squint a lot. The phone's short height means that it often doesn't charge "vertically" in Qi chargers. It doesn't fit in my car's integrated phone holder, it just rattles around.
And I really missed the zoom lens.
So I'm OK with the Pro, and I will get used to slightly larger phones.
(The "Max" is still stupid.)