hi everyone Aaron here for zollotech and the iphone 13 mini has been out for a little over
six months and is one of the most beloved phones that apple has ever made if you talk to anyone
that uses an iphone 12 mini or 13 mini they absolutely love the size and it looks like this
is going to be the last of its kind or the last year that apple is going to make a mini iphone
as the iphone 14 is rumored to basically have two larger sizes and two regular sizes the mini is
apparently going away and so i thought we'd take a look at it after six months talk about durability
battery life my brother actually uses one of these full-time so we'll take a look at some of
his battery life as well and also talk about any issues it might have had but the first thing is
the design the design like i said is something that most people that have one absolutely love
it reminds a lot of people of the iphone 5 style phone and brings it back similar to that size
where with the last one we had was the iphone se first generation so the last small phone was
this se but instead of having just a small phone we have a new design with new features and much
better cameras and a much better display so the squared off edges i know a lot of people
really appreciate and the new color for 13 is this pink color so that's why i have this one
and then also the last phone that we had the newer color was green so with the 12 minion 13 mini
we only get two years of what most people say is their favorite phone in a long time
now personally this phone is just way too small for me however having these squared off edges
helps with holding on to it and i really like that they're matte this year with a matte edge around
the outside edge and then glass front and back and you may have already noticed that depending on the
angle i hold this hat the back really picks up a lot of fingerprints i wish they may have
might have made a matte pink maybe color like we have with sierra blue on the promax so if we
had these combinations together the matte sides accompanied by maybe a matte back that would be
the best device i think for as far as fingerprint resistance and just overall feel and look
so maybe we'll see that in the future with future iphones but so far it looks like like i said we're
not getting another mini now use for the mini is one of the reasons many people like it it's an
easy to use one-handed phone i can wrap my hands around it about one and a half times or so and
it's easy to reach from side to side if you have small hands it's going to be easy to reach side
to side or maybe go into the control center it's just really simple to use with one hand that's
probably the best thing about it you're not losing any features that you get from the iphone 12
you're just getting a smaller size with a slightly smaller battery as far as overall durability well
this phone hasn't been used a hundred percent of the time for the past six months but i did
reach out to my brother who doesn't use a screen protector or a case on his phone to see if he had
any scratches or any wear he doesn't have any wear around the outside edge and neither do i
and he also doesn't have any scratches or anything on the back that are visible however on the front
there's scratches as you can see here so there's a few scratches at the top by the camera and it
seems to have held up well considering he's not using a screen protector or anything else now of
course those scratches could be avoided if you use the screen protector but using a screen protector
or a case changes the way the phone feels overall and with apple care it covers accidental damage so
i personally don't worry about it too much but if it's something that bothers you of course
you could just put a screen protector on here or a case i know a lot of people that switch
between using a case or different cases just for the overall texture but to me personally i just
like the phone without anything on it but let me know what you use your phone with in the comments
below if you use a screen protector or a case i'd love to hear from you there now the display
goes up to 800 nits of regular brightness so it's brighter than the 12 mini and it's super bright
especially if you're watching hdr content where it goes up to 1200 nits of brightness this is really
helpful especially in sunlight and of course if you're watching hdr quality content so you
have that option in youtube to watch hdr videos this is one of my hdr videos you can see here
and you can see the option up to 2160p or 4k hdr so the display looks great and this video is not
an hdr so it will look very bright if i turn it up so you'll see it's already sort of blown out in
the background and hard to see and we're only at half brightness i have to bring it down to about a
quarter brightness just for you to see it somewhat normal so that gives you an idea of how bright
this display goes if i turn it all the way up it will just almost look white on the display so it's
really very very bright and great to use because of that now the display does use pwm or pulse
width modulation to control brightness like all of apple's oled displays and many other oled
displays out there it flashes the display faster and slower depending on the brightness level
to bring brightness up and down it's not something you can see with your eyes but you can see it at
240 frames per second in slow motion so that's something that typically doesn't bother most
people but one in 10 people are bothered by it so that's why some people really prefer maybe
the iphone se where it had an lcd display or the iphone 11 but for me it really hasn't bothered
me with this generation of phones or the last generation of 12 series phones it does seem to be
a little bit better on the pro displays as people who have tested this seem to think that it has dc
dimming where it holds the display brightness without flickering it so that's something
that you can see under slow motion where it's not flickering with the pro display but it is with the
regular 13 mini so that may be a cause for concern for some people where you would typically get
headaches or maybe feel a little nauseated or just have eye strain in general one other thing to know
is the notch is actually narrower but actually deeper into the display meaning that it protrudes
further down into the display compared to the 12 mini you can see that here and that creates
a little bit of an issue on youtube with ultra wide screen content so if we go into youtube here
i'll go into one of my videos let me turn the brightness down as it's an hdr video also
and if we go into the video itself we'll rotate here to landscape you'll see on youtube it
actually protrudes into the display a little bit more with the 13 mini being at the top and 12
mini at the bottom so you'll see that it can be a little bit annoying for some however it's only on
ultra widescreen content now speed and overall performance is really something you don't think
about with this phone it's just super fast all of the time scrolling opening apps maybe we go into
let's just go into keynote for the first time i haven't opened it on this phone
typically when using any app it's just going to be fast and fluid really you don't have to think
about it at all if you want to go into the camera go back go back into music switch back and forth
it seems to be plenty fast all of the time so no issues there with speed or performance
it's only loading over wi-fi so it's taking a little bit of time but once it's loaded
it will refresh much quicker and some of that's going to be dependent on your overall reception
now the reception of the phone has been pretty good for most people i typically find that
with their 5g phones and this has millimeter wave you can see the millimeter wave antenna
if your phone supports it you'll have that option and of course you'll have 5g on this
phone as apple has pushed that a lot with the latest couple generations of phones 5g seems to
work well however in talking to my brother with earlier versions of ios 15 he actually had issues
where he had to turn off overall cellular and wi-fi just switch to airplane mode turn it back
off and then it would actually work properly on cellular again this may be a t-mobile issue but
i had that issue with some earlier versions of ios 15 that seemingly seemed to be fixed at this
point but in the past some of the reception has been an issue it doesn't seem to be now and seems
to be better with these aluminum banded phones than it is with the stainless steel pro phones
for some reason now as far as battery life this has not been my main phone full time but it is
something i've used before so i reached out to my brother who has a black iphone 13 mini that
he uses full time and asked him to send me his battery life he's had it since day one charges it
every single night on the charger puts it on the charger in his car that's wireless and that's how
he charges it and so he sent me those i have some screenshots here he's down to 99 battery health 80
after two years is normal this is above average so that's pretty good and you'll see his battery
life here this was yesterday he had one hour and 15 minutes of screen on time 24 minutes of screen
off time and didn't even use 25 of his battery then i asked him to take a look at the day before
that or a couple days before he had five hours and 44 minutes of screen on time four hours and 57
minutes of screen off time and used a little over a hundred percent so he's getting anywhere between
five to six hours of screen on time that typically means he charged it at some point
but he normally goes to bed not having to charge it and will get about five hours of screen on time
sometimes six if he's lucky and then occasionally you could use an external battery pack with it
maybe apple's magsafe battery pack or an anchor battery pack one of those to get some extended
life and it fits perfectly on these devices so you have that option as well if you wanted it but
overall it seems to be okay not as great of course as something that's going to have more room for a
larger battery now overall the cameras are great on this you just have two cameras you have a
regular wide camera and an ultra wide but you don't have that telephoto zoom but typically
if you have enough light you don't need it because apple doesn't even use it on the pro max phones or
the pro phones they'll use the regular camera and then if the light is a little bit lower or they
have different lighting situations then they'll use the telephoto zoom at 2x so you really don't
see much of a difference whatsoever as you can see in these photos here they look basically the same
on both phones so no concerns there and recording video you have 4k hdr at 60 frames per second you
can see that in your settings so if we go down to camera we go to 4k 30 you have 4k 30 4k 60
and hdr video as well so you have the option with that dolby vision hdr content it looks great and
it sounds pretty good as well so if we go to the camera you can see we have 4k 30 we can switch to
60 frames per second or 24 and we don't have the option though to go to hdr maybe we'll have that
later on instead of having to go into settings maybe they'll bring that with ios 16 hopefully
we'll see some more settings improvements here but we can enable the different video modes if
we switch to the forward-facing camera you can see we have similar options and if i hit record
now i'm recording from the front-facing camera of the iphone 13 mini so it gives you an idea of the
overall audio quality from the mic compared to my studio mic and also the visual quality now
it's the same camera that we get on the 13 pro and 13 pro max so really there's no difference there
however we will get better quality from the rear facing camera we just don't have apple's prores
because this isn't the pro iphones but overall it's pretty good that brings me to should you
still buy an iphone 13 mini in 2022 and i would say if this is the perfect size phone for you
then absolutely i wouldn't hesitate however if maybe you have an iphone 12 mini or maybe
even an iphone se and you wanted this at a discount i would imagine apple will still sell
these for a while to get rid of excess inventory if they still have some after the iphone 14 comes
out so it doesn't look like we're going to get an iphone 14 mini so if this is the perfect size
i would highly recommend it however if you care most about battery life well the best phone out
there right now is the iphone 13 pro max for that so if battery life is the most important thing
maybe get a 13 or 13 pro max something along those lines as you'll have a much larger battery
but if that doesn't matter to you and you care more about the overall size of the phone but want
the best experience then definitely pick one up it will get future ios support at least for five
years based on what apple has done before so that brings us pretty much to ios 20 at this point so
expect this to be supported for many many years so that's everything with the iphone 13 mini
i definitely recommend it like i said if it's the right size for you
but for me it's just too small and i'll go back to using the 13 pro max
i really think a phone between the size of the 13 pro and pro max would be perfect but
the 13 pro max works for me for now but let me know what you think in the comments below
if you'd like to get your hands on this wallpaper of course i'll link it in the description like
i normally do and if you haven't subscribed already please subscribe and if you enjoyed
the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is Aaron i'll see you next time