I owned one and returned it. The biggest flaw was the battery life just wasn’t long enough, which is coupled with a relatively slow charging speed.

I might be more fond of the form factor once phone technology advances ten years or so.

That's a very accurate representation of the battery life, however the reality is that it has the best battery life of any phone with that size + performance combo on the market for my usage - its just that more "regular" sized phones blow it out of the water.

Edit: I negate this somewhat with a Magsafe magnetic wireless battery.

I owned the 13 pro. Gave it to my daughter and bought a 13 mini for myself. I don't see how anybody carries around the bigger model in their pockets, but maybe that's just me.

Many people use their phone as their primary or even sole computer. I think many things would be hard if the screen were too small.

But I mainly use my phone to quickly glance at things, use a map, and a few things like that. And occasionally talking. So I'm with you: less is more. These days I often go out without the phone and just use my watch. Works great.

I had one of the "megaphones" (plus sized) for a while and it was horrible.

I suspect there's a Parkinson's Law like effect at play. Phones increase battery capacity to meet demands of software which expand to fill available battery life. If a phone is going to have a smaller battery, which is a necessity for a SFF device, it can't be expected to perform the same tasks at the same speed as a full-size phone. But I haven't heard of any OS adapting in such a way. Power management is optimized for the average which is larger than the mini. And not only the OS but the user has to adapt to expect a more frugal experience with a small phone. I don't see that attitude with a lot of people. Nor do I believe advertisers would be happy with a platform that has "use fewer apps" has a selling point.

Uninstalling Facebook extends battery runtime.

For the ability to comfortably use my phone one handed, I found the battery trade-off worth it.

But I don’t really travel far enough with just what’s on my person for it to be noticeable. At the very least I have a small bag, and some form of small power bank has always been in there. The 12 Mini charges incredibly fast in my perspective.

I was stubborn enough to use an iPhone SE until almost the release of the 12 Mini, and that thing has atrocious charging speed and battery life. But back then I was just amazed at how much better it was than the 5 I’d been holding out with previously.

Sure it was a downgrade from the X I used for 6 months battery wise, but I just never got used to the size. Maybe the long battery life was partially because I hated and avoided using it the whole time.

TLDR: Every 4-5 years Apple releases another small phone, and I generally refuse to upgrade until then.

Face id to me is an anti feature driven by the desire to eliminate a hardware component.

Particularly with the old school LG back of device sensor, I could have the device unlocked by the time it exits my pocket.

Face ID may be good for driving and Ubers, but my phone is not always pointed at my face.

I’d love if they put TouchID on the power button like on the iPads