| ▲ | CephalopodMD 6 days ago |
| Also still rocking a 13 mini. There are dozens of us! Dozens! (Also to those who say not enough people wanted a mini phone to be worth producing: I submit the case of Prego chunky pasta sauce. Not many people want a chunky pasta sauce, but you sell a whole lot more pasta sauce in total if you sell both regular and chunky pasta sauce. Malcolm Gladwell has a TED talk about this.) |
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| ▲ | TACD 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| My pet theory about why the Minis sold poorly is that the 12 Mini was released just a few months after the SE 2; I suspect a lot of the would-be Mini purchasers had just bought an SE 2 instead (not knowing the Mini was just around the corner), and are also not a demographic interested in upgrading their phone every year. |
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| ▲ | mrweasel 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Didn't the SE models sell notoriously bad as well? There are always a bunch of us who wants a smaller phone, but the sales number indicates that we are the minority. To some extend I also think it explains the increasingly thin phones. With the increases in screen size, they need to make the phones thinner, otherwise it would feel like a brick in your pocket. | | |
| ▲ | torstenvl 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No. Even the 2022—which was intentionally nerfed—sold 15-20 million and ranked in the top ten best-selling phones. | | |
| ▲ | mrweasel 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Wasn't eight of the ten best selling phones iPhones? It was even beaten by the iPhone 14 line up, which was only for sale in four out of the twelve months, while the SE was available for all twelve. You're right that it was good sales figures for a smartphone, but not great for an iPhone. |
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| ▲ | mrheosuper 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The SE3 has bad selling because it is exactly the same SE2 with upgrade SOC. People buying SE phone mostly don't care about SOC performance. |
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| ▲ | HumblyTossed 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I always point out that the minis were a billion dollar product. Most companies would DIE for a billion dollar product. | | |
| ▲ | NetMageSCW 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Apple is like CBS in that regard - shows with viewers that other networks would kill for get canceled at CBS because they expect more. Apple doesn’t get as much ROI on phones that sell in the low ten millions or low single digit percentage of the market. But I do think they could put those phones on a slow refresh cycle and teach e.g. Mini or Plus users to wait for the next release and stack that market together over a few years to be worthwhile to them. |
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| ▲ | brightbeige 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My theory is rather about battery life: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588733 | |
| ▲ | port11 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | My pet theory is that having to charge the phone twice a day was a deal breaker. We wanted small, not "impossibly thin" and always dead. |
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| ▲ | nchase 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Agree, and as an ex-mini user, I wish this was the world we lived in. I presume the problem is that iPhones are a lot more expensive to produce than tomato sauce, and it's a lot more difficult to get rid of the ones that people don't buy. |
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| ▲ | logicalfails 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm trying to hang on to my 13 mini until next year, when hopefully Apple will have figured out Apple Intelligence and upgrade the phone hardware to run it. But I'm worried my 13 mini won't make it that long. It's starting to struggle with even basic apps and lags just reading news articles. Battery is still at over 80% though |
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| ▲ | wffurr 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | My 13 mini works great. Just got a replacement on Swappa after dropping mine in a lake. What’s lagging for you? I haven’t noticed anything even remotely slow on this phone. | | |
| ▲ | SSLy 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Safari sometimes lags terribly, otherwise it's ok. | | |
| ▲ | wffurr 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Adblocker might help you there. It's great that Safari on iOS supports extensions. |
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| ▲ | throwuxiytayq 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It's starting to struggle with even basic apps and lags just reading news articles Not my experience, but I tend to blame the web rather than my phone when things get laggy. I estimate that my 13 is about in the middle of its life, barring unexpected rapid deceleration events. | |
| ▲ | debian3 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | My battery is at 80% after 2 years. Mine is still on AppleCare+. I always do express replacement so I get a « new » one. Hopefully my battery reach 79% soon. |
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| ▲ | cde-v 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I kept seeing people mention the 13 mini but I always thought the 12 mini was the last mini. Just looked it up and I see why now, seems like the 13 mini is barely different from the 12 mini. |
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| ▲ | p00dles 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I had the 13 mini and now the 12 mini and the 13 mini was noticeably better - battery life, camera, screen brightness (big difference when using phone on a bike for navigation) | |
| ▲ | buildsjets 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They added just enough battery capacity to make it thru the day. Thats about it. | | | |
| ▲ | armen52 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The CPU in the 13 Mini is something like 20-30% more power efficient, making it much more viable given the small battery capacity of the phone. | |
| ▲ | amai 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Iphone 13 mini has a bigger battery. This is quite relevant, because the Iphone 12 mini battery life is quite bad. |
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| ▲ | zahma 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Speaking of dozens. I’m on a 12 Mini and will be hard pressed to give it up. I also replaced the battery recently and am still quite pleased with its performance! |
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| ▲ | tate_thurston 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I’m one of the dozens on an iPhone 13 mini waiting for the next mini release. Before that I was on the iPhone 8 |
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| ▲ | veunes 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Apple could easily keep a "mini" around as the lightweight option for folks who don't want a pocket tablet |
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| ▲ | NetMageSCW 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in design, engineering and manufacturing is not easily. |
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| ▲ | mrits 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| just gave up mine last month. |
