I have found the iPhone Air much easier to hold than the iPhone 13 Pro it replaced because of how light it is, even though the iPhone Air has a bigger screen.

I switched from a pixel 3 to a pixel 9 pro over a year ago, and I still miss the smaller form factor. the pixel 3 really was the perfect size for me and I am sad I can no longer get a smallish phone with a high end processor.

Funnily, the large display is the most important thing for me. I find my efficiency directly proportional to display size (which holds for laptops too).

If a 30 second task can be done in just 20 on a device with a larger display, that's absolutely worth it for me.

Also larger device tends to imply longer battery life too.

I don’t think anyone should make fun of you for it but I’m in the opposite boat. I’m so glad that they make the pro max variants because most smartphones are so small that it hurts my fingers to bend them in the unnaturally inward way it requires to hold and interact with them.

Being the crazy person that spams the feedback form isn’t supporting the argument for a new mini.

If people wanted it, you wouldn’t be faking the feedback.

I get that getting rid of touchid haptic eliminates dead space but still blows my mind they couldn't or refused to figure out screen-based touch id as an option at least. Samsung has it...

The thing I've come to like about FaceID on my 13 mini is that I can require it for certain apps to open that don't require it - e.g. messaging as opposed to banking which generally require some kind of auth by default - which is much better security in case someone snatches it out of my hand while it's unlocked. It's pretty seamless because I'm generally looking at the device anyway, and it's much less faff than it would be with TouchID.

Same. Home button is sooo much better than swiping gestures

I "adapted" to losing the fingerprint reader.

Wow, it has a lot of unexpected downsides.

I've a lot of unexpected behavior from the faceid thing. Lots of unexpected swipe-ups that drop me out of an app and put me on the home screen. Can't unlock in the dark, too close to your face, off to the side, in your pocket. Lots of "I saw your face an unlocked" that I didn't know had happened.

fingerprint sensor unlocked when you wanted it to, with haptics. switching apps was a button operation, not happening when you didn't expect it.

I'm also a touchID / iphone 8 size fan, but the nice cameras/zoom in flagship models are hard to give up. At least Face ID has improved significantly from the early days of iphone 10 -- it's faster and more reliable than it was on the older models if you tried it back then.

I don't get Air either. My guess is that Air is just a stepping stone for a foldable iphone.

It’s basically iPhone 14-sized.

6.1" vs. 6.3" on the regular 17

It was 3-5%, if I remember the numbers correctly. There are rumors that the Air didn’t sell better.

1% of iPhone sales is more people than live in most countries.

The release schedule was crap, as well as the 12 mini being an objectively bad phone.

Spring 2020, they released the iPhone SE 2020, 4 years after the previous iPhone SE. This satiated a lot of the demand for people holding out for a smaller phone. Then came the surprise with 12 mini in September of 2020, except the battery life and performance sucked, garnering bad reviews.

Then, finally in September 2021, they released the 13 mini, an objectively good, smaller phone. But over the previous 18 months, a lot of the buyers for the 13 mini had already bought the 2020 SE or were burned by the 12 mini.

I did! I ended up buying a kit off ifixit IIRC. It was super cheap and works great! If I did it again, I would splurge for the Apple verified battery as a third party one doesn't work with the new Battery app features.

My 13 mini on iOS 26 shows 83% maximum capacity but makes it through the day with light-ish use (Spotify (although generally offline playlists because of lossless audio) NYT games, email, messaging, browsing, Instapaper). I do have lots of accessibility settings enabled to stop things like transparency and animations though. See my comment here for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45544554

I still have my 12 Mini, changed the battery in a Apple store a year ago (and they broke the screen in the process so got a new screen too) for I think 99 EUR, now the battery still last ~2 days, easily worth it. Maximum capacity says "87%" right now although I don't know what exactly that's based on.

I'm keeping this phone until either Apple releses a new mini or until Motorola released a GrapheneOS phone, whichever comes first.

Just replaced my 13 mini battery this past week which was at 80%. Noticeable improvement. I'm not a very heavy user but did find that I was getting to the 20/10% range at the end of most days. Now its 30/40 and I'm happy! Many more years in the old steed yet.

I’m down to 75% on my 13mini. I recently picked up a magsafe battery pack that gets me through the day when I’m traveling and can’t charge.

I was considering swapping out the phone battery but this is a better alternative for now.

13 mini user here. I have 86% battery health, and it is "okay". I need to charge it about once a day. Also holding out due to the smaller size.

I got the base 13 at launch day whose battery health now states 86%. While I have noticed degraded battery performance, the stated health has been stuck at 86% for quite a while now.

I guess it's bugged out and would opt for a battery change if you're feeling the battery pains, I'm thinking of upgrading to the new base model this year for the usb c and 120hz display.

Get an SE 3rd gen!

One can only hope... My 13 mini's performance, especially for the Camera and Safari seem to have hit new lows with iOS 26. I'm sticking with the mini for its size, but also its weight. So far the Air is the only alternative I think I could switch to, but apparently that's also on Apple's chopping block due to poor sales.

Been thinking of doing the same. My 12 is showing its cycles, but it’s either I have a phone that lives in my front pocket, or I can go phone-less.

I refuse to have a phone I have to constantly carry, hold, or move from back pocket when I sit. This damn thing is in my hands enough, I don’t need to increase the surface area for potential distractions.

I highly recommend hunting down a 13 mini now (with a lot of battery left) so you can switch when you have to. I did last summer and was glad I didn´t have to organize one on short notice. And if you avoid ios26 - make sure the ios18 on the device is updated because now you no longer get updated within ios18

Where are you finding refurb’ed 13 Minis? Apple only goes back to 14s now on store.apple.com in the U. S.

It will be even shorter than the mini, but also wider than the Pro Max. The aspect ratio is different from a normal iPhone. The weight should be in the Pro range, and of course it’ll be relatively thick. Not a mini replacement in my book.

That's true, some foldables like that exist. The problem for me is that I don't want to pay for the folding part, not interested in that.

I tried the Air and went back to the mini because of the camera compromises. One big issue for me was losing Cinematic video, which I use all the time.

Now imagine an iPhone Mini Air. I'd be all over that, camera compromises or not.

for me it's the comfort/ability to put the thing in my pocket.