i really didn’t want to make this video i was happy with my iphone 13 pro review i was gonna leave it at that and move on with life but i feel like a lot of people don’t understand how special the iphone 13 mini truly is there’s not a lot of small options out there you look on the android market you have like a sony phone which probably is only available in one market in azure by jean and then there’s a couple of uh android devices that are budget like the 4a that satisfy that small form factor the only other true premium option was the iphone 12 mini at the time surprisingly i was shocked actually that a lot of it didn’t sell well and it was one of the worst performing new smartphones for apple but i think some of that had to do with the fact that the battery life on the 12 mini just wasn’t that great you could barely get through the entire day but then the iphone 13 mini came out onto the market and the biggest feature about it was the ability to go through the entire day in fact the battery life on this is so good that it beats out the iphone 12 from last year i used the iphone 12 from last year and i was super happy with the battery life do you understand how hard it is to get good hardware inside of a form factor this thin usually a lot of things have to be
sacrificed in order to pack everything in a device this small apple was somehow i don’t know how but somehow was able to increase the battery size stick the iphone 12 pro max camera inside of here and have almost the same equal sound of the external speakers that the iphone 13 has and the reason why i don’t say it’s equal is because the chassis is smaller so technically the sound can reverberate through the bigger chassis on the iphone 13 and it perceives the sound is a little bit louder but the liberating factor of using this device at least with my experience was that i started using it as a tool and not as an obsession you know i went to the gym and usually if i take the pro max i have to stick it in my pocket and then i have to take the weights which are on my lap and push the pro towards my body so that the weights don’t rest on them and half the time i have to take the promax out of my pocket in order to do this because the phone’s just going to fall out with the pro 13 or iphone 12 or 13 i can kind of just push the phone up it still feels a little uncomfortable before i go back into an actual chest press but i’m still worried about my phone getting damaged with the mini it’s like where are you are you in there do you exist i can’t find you and that is a liberating thing to have if you’re a runner and you’re someone who doesn’t like carrying these bigger heavier devices and trust me the pro max is heavy okay you won’t feel the mini 13.
It’s less likely to bother you while it’s jiggling around in your pocket or even if you strap it to your arm it’s a lighter experience for you now i truly understand why they made the notch smaller on all of these devices it wasn’t because they’re trying to be cool and and give you more screen real estate the screen real estate you get from this is pretty much non-existent what you do get from it is the ability to stick the iphone 12 pro max camera inside of the iphone 13 mini and 13. you can you take a smaller notch you rearrange the actual camera layout and you open up more space to place a better camera inside you have to understand the real estate in these devices is precious there’s only so much space you have for each module that goes inside of here and i find it unbelievable that they were able to take the bigger sensor of the pro max and put it in a body this small now a lot of people are asking but matt the iphone 12 mini doesn’t have the high refresh display and in my pro review i said it’s the fastest thing about the phone like forget chips forget processors that’s what a lot of people are going to notice first now there are a ton of videos on youtube of other youtubers showing the 13 pro and comparing it to a phone without a high refresh display seeing if the average consumer can notice it and for the most part i would say about 80 of the time they could not notice the high refresh display unless the person pointed it out i find that very weird maybe it’s because my eyes are accustomed to high refresh displays because i’m a tech reviewer a big gamer so i have high refresh displays everywhere but i feel like after a little bit of awareness a little bit of time noticing it it will be
very hard for the regular consumer to go back now did it bother me on the iphone 13 mini sure i wish it had a high refresh display i do but it bothered me the least that’s the point because the display is only 5.4 inches i didn’t feel like i needed as much as my bigger smartphones that have the bigger display to work with now this display is awesome they were able to take the hundred nits of brightness that was exclusive to the 12 pro and 12 pro max last year and again bring it down to the 13 and 13 mini so if you’re outdoors you have that extra brightness to help you if sunlight is hitting your phone honestly there’s just something to be said about using a phone this small being this one handable if you use a small phone like this for a few days every other phone you use after that feels big it takes like a few more days to get reaccustomed to the bigger devices because you’re just so used to like chucking this in your hand i will say this though like i feel like this is a smartphone that putting a case on it you really don’t have to and even if you did the bulk it adds is not overbearing compared to let’s say something like the pro max where it already makes a big phone feel bigger at the very least and i said this in my pro review at the very least do two things put a screen protector on it because i find that the iphone 12 and even the 13 tends to scratch a little bit easier even though it technically has the stronger glass
and put a skin on it you know like i have a dbrand skin on mine sometimes and i find that it does a good job of preventing scratches on the back now i’m not going to go too in-depth on the camera just because the wide lens is literally the exact same wide lens as the 12 pro max as last year again pretty crazy considering that the pro max was the only device that got it and they were able to squish it inside of the mini now this will allow in about 47 percent more light compared to the iphone 12 last year but the one big thing i noticed was the color science previous iphones the 12 and 11 specifically apple’s color science tended to lean towards a warmer look this year it’s a lot more neutral and i think the reason why is because they introduced a brand new feature called filters this lets you the user determine how you want your photo to look if you want to do standard which is apple’s take on how a photo should look you can do that if you swipe it to rich contrast it’s going to be more vibrant it reminds me of the pixel if you go to vibrant it reminds me of a samsung photo you go to worm it kind of reminds me of last year’s photo you’d get on an iphone and then of course there is a cool tone which tends to make things look cooler the only thing i have to say though is cinematic mode it’s a little gimmicky at least right now i feel like it’s in the same position that portrait mode was when it first came out on the earlier iphone it wasn’t that great when it
came out it took a few years and until portrait mode became amazing and i feel like that’s something we’re going to see with cinematic mode too the other thing i noticed if you’re using your phone a lot to read i really didn’t feel like i was reading on a teeny tiny display yes the font is a little bit smaller but you can equalize that by going into the settings and reducing or increasing the font size and the second thing is you only lose two words per line up to two words per line and that’s not that big of a hit compared to the iphone 13 or 13 pro the only time i didn’t like the mini is if i was watching videos in landscape mode because of the aspect ratio you already get black bars on the left and right hand side if you’re watching 16 by nine content and the screen size i feel is a bit too small for landscape content so if you’re someone who’s literally using your phone all day long to watch movies and clips in landscape then yes i feel like you’re better off with the iphone 13 but if you’re using your phone for the odd show the odd movie you’re mostly watching stuff in portrait mode like on youtube shorts or tiktok the iphone 13 mini feels absolutely fine as for performance it’s an a15 it feels just as fast as the a14 and i promise you in the games you play you’re not going to feel difference between last year’s processor and this one apple’s ahead their processes are just too fast and the stuff you’re
doing on your phone truly can’t take advantage of the hardware they’re ahead of the game but i will say this i like this mini a lot and i truly feel like it’s the first small phone in a very long time that doesn’t sacrifice anything and if you’ve always wanted a small device without having that battery anxiety this is the moment to buy the small phone to buy the mini now it’s not for everybody okay people just like bigger screens that’s just the fact of reality but if you’ve always wanted a small device and you’re not someone who’s using your phone to watch content and landscape all day long and you want to feel free and you want to feel your phone’s a tool and not an obsession and you only want to use it when you need it then i think the mini is for you and the best part about it is you’re going to save money as for upgrading look i don’t believe in year over year upgrades at this point in the smartphone cycle phones are just too good it’s it’s really hard to get a bad experience okay only upgrade if your phone needs to be upgraded maybe something that’s in the 10s and prior to that but if you have an iphone 11 or 12 don’t even think about it wait till next year anyways that wraps up my review on the mini fantastic device an amazing smartphone if you have any more questions about it let me know in the comment section down below like the video if you liked it subscribe if you haven’t already and i’ll see you guys in the next one
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