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

I’m currently on iOS 16 with iPhone 12 mini. I don’t even see an option to update to anything but iOS26, so I’m staying put.

My worst fear is buying a 13mini that is already updated to IOS26, then I think I would be screwed.