‘Small but mighty’: This is the most affordable compact smartphone ever

iPhone 13 mini is a compact smartphone with good battery life, powerful camera and twice the storage capacity.

According to Expert Review, this is the cheapest and smallest smartphone in Apple’s iPhone 13 series. With a 5.4-inch screen, it’s even smaller and lighter than the iPhone SE (2020).

Despite its small size, the iPhone 13 mini is very powerful, capable of rivaling the largest and most expensive phones Apple offers on the market. That is also the key to the appeal of the iPhone 13 mini.

This model delivers the power and capabilities you’d expect from a premium phone, but packed into a much smaller and more pocketable design.

Unique smartphone model

Expert Review said that no other major manufacturer has created a phone as compact, powerful and full of features as the iPhone 13 mini.

While other small smartphones can be found on the market, you’ll often encounter more limitations due to their slow chips, unsophisticated screens, and unattractive cameras.

iPhone 13 mini has the same flat bezel design as its predecessor, at first glance it will only see it with a few more minor tweaks. The notch (rabbit ears) containing the front camera is slightly narrowed, the phone body is thicker and the rear camera cluster is more bulky due to the lenses arranged diagonally.

The rear camera cluster includes an improved main camera with a larger sensor, accompanied by an ultra-wide-angle camera similar to its predecessor. Apple also gives the iPhone 13 mini a brighter screen, with maximum brightness increased to 800 nits.

The smallest size that most other manufacturers choose for phones is 6 inches. So with a screen size of 5.4 inches, the iPhone 13 mini becomes really different.

iPhone SE (2020) sells for $479 for 64GB (or $541 for 128GB) but it’s less powerful, has shorter battery life, smaller screen, lower quality, and isn’t as equipped suffers from an ultra-wide-angle camera like the iPhone 13 mini.

Screen review

Similar to its predecessor, iPhone 13 mini uses a wide color gamut OLED screen with wonderfully vivid colors, perfect contrast, and amazing results.

One disappointing thing is that the iPhone 13 mini does not have a 120Hz screen refresh rate like the standard iPhone 13, but is limited to 60Hz. This is a big shortcoming because even the cheapest Android smartphones today have screens with high refresh rates.

Performance and battery life

The A15 Bionic chip significantly increases the performance of the iPhone 13 mini compared to its predecessor. It works as fast as large and expensive smartphones.

The lack of 120 Hz refresh rate makes the iPhone 13 mini feel less smooth than the iPhone 13 Pro but its other features are comparable to most high-end smartphones on the market, like Samsung. Galaxy S21 Ultra for example.

Battery life is also quite good, lasting 15 hours 17 minutes, longer than the battery life of the iPhone 12 mini (14 hours 49 minutes).

Camera

iPhone 13 mini is equipped with an f/2.4 ultra-wide-angle camera and f/1.6 aperture main camera with stabilization, allowing for 12MP photos and 4K video recording at up to 60 frames per second.

This model offers a different (albeit small) image quality compared to the iPhone 12 mini in low light. If you zoom in on the darker areas, you may find the photos taken with the iPhone 13 mini are cleaner and less noisy.

Conclude

iPhone 13 Mini faces the sad reality of being the lowest-selling version of all iPhone 13 models (only about 3% of total iPhone sales in the first quarter of 2022 in the US market). A report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) also called it the most estranged device in the iPhone generation launched in 2021.

However, many technology news sites such as Expert Review, Notebookcheck, NextPit all agree that the iPhone 13 mini deserves a better result than that.

According to Notebookcheck, the iPhone 13 mini is an almost perfect device for weak users who prefer small devices.

Meanwhile, according to NextPit, iPhone 13 mini is a reliable companion in daily life.

“Buying the iPhone 13 mini in 2023 will be much more valuable than buying any other model launched in 2021, because Apple has no longer launched any successor to the iPhone 13 mini after the release of the iPhone 13 mini. iPhone 14 series launched in September 2022.

Therefore, if you are looking for a compact smartphone from Apple, the iPhone 13 mini will be the right choice. Other alternatives are only iPhone 12 mini and iPhone SE 2022. Both models are cheaper but have fewer features. Compared to the iPhone 13 mini, the iPhone SE 2022 looks outdated,” concludes NexPit.