[faeriechangling]

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.

[bwanab]

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.

[gumby]

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.

[adesanmi]

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.

[whoopdedo]

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.

[supertrope]

Uninstalling Facebook extends battery runtime.

[BluePen8]

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.