This is the iPhone 12 mini.
It's the first gen mini iPhone that came out in 2020 along with the regular iPhone 12,
12 pro and 12 pro max.
Is it still worth buying in 2022, or should you go with the iPhone 13 mini
or maybe a different device from the last year's lineup?
First of all, it's a small phone.
It has a 5.4 inch Super Retina XDR OLED display,
HDR10, Dolby Vision, 625 nits of brightness, peaking at 1200.
Only 60hz tho.
With the new squared off design,
a dual camera system that's 12mp main wide lens and a 12mp ultrawide
As well as that front facing selfie camera with the same numbers.
5g connectivity, a really fast capable chip with a familiar
software experience and not so great battery life.
We'll talk about that later.
Has great haptics, stereo speakers, IP68 water and dust resistance
Oh, and it does not come with a charger in the box.
That's good stuff.
There's pros and cons to this device, as with any other,
and we're gonna go through all of them in this video.
Let's start off with the pros.
My name is Pedja and on this channel we talk about tech and creativity.
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iPhone 12 mini comes in six different color options.
White, black, green, red, blue, and the later released purple.
I got the green one here with the black leather skin from dbrand.
Shoutout!
So, there's a lot to choose from in that area.
It has amazing cameras all capable of recording
4k video up to 60fps and they have Dolby Vision HDR support up to 30fps.
Great daylight performance both photo and video with good dynamic range,
colors and portrait shots for that matter.
All lenses support night mode as well. It does a great job in 99% of cases and allows
you to get crispy clean looking results in less than ideal lighting situations.
It does like a telephoto lens, that one is reserved for the pro models,
but aside from that you can't go wrong with this camera.
It's very reliable and it will give you great results without
having to adjust your settings too much, just point and shoot.
It's a 10 for me.
Performance is still top of the line.
Has the same chip as the whole 12 series so you're
not missing out on speed if you go with a smaller phone.
That's something that we don't see very often with compact devices, they usually pack an inferior
chip, while the latest and greatest goes to their bigger siblings. The S21 Ultras of the world.
But in this case, that's not the case.
The screen on this little guy, even though it is smaller, and even though it's just 60hz,
it's one of the highest quality displays out there, again, same as the rest of the 12 lineup.
That being said, one thing that ails them all, all four 2020 models:
They have sort of a yellow-ish tint to their displays.
When you turn on true tone, they just get kinda yorange for some reason.
So I tend to keep true tone turned off most of the time and that fixes the problem.
But hey, listen, if you don't mind your screen being just a bit on the warm
side every now and then, it's an amazing high quality panel with great contrast,
deep blacks, a lot of details and all that good stuff.
Now, let's jump on to some not so great things about the iPhone 12 mini.
First of all, it comes in one of these new age boxes that contains only a
USB-C to lightning cable, and some stickers of course, but no charger.
So you would have to purchase that separately if you don't
have a fast charger laying around somewhere.
Apple's chargers can get quite up there in price,
but there are some great high-quality third-party options, like the ones from Anker for example.
This video is not sponsored by Anker, but I'll leave some affiliate links in
the description if you want to pick up a charger for yourself
and help support the channel along the way with no additional cost to you of course.
Okay so we have to talk about this at some point - the battery.
iPhone 12 mini has a 2227mAh battery.
That's a lot...
Supports 20W fast charging which will give you around 50% charge in 30 minutes.
15W MagSafe wireless charging and 7.5W fast wireless charging.
And that's all great. MagSafe - also great,
but the battery life itself is barely acceptable in my opinion.
When I first got the iPhone 12 mini, I didn't really see the battery as a huge issue,
since I'm not a power user and in the beginning it really did the job for me.
But now that I've used it for a longer period of time,
I'm starting to notice it more and more every day.
There's almost no way that battery is going to last a full day even with moderate usage.
I don't play demanding games or stream movies or anything like that, I mostly use my phone for
social media, checking my email, texting and stuff like that.
Plus some video recording for the channel which does take a toll on the battery, but
that's not my everyday use case, and I didn't really count those
heavy days where I use the camera a lot towards my final conclusion.
Even without those 4k video days, I can barely make it to the evening. On most days,
I would usually have to top it off around 6 or 7pm.
Now, I personally don't see that as a major problem, since I work from home
and most of the time I do have a charger right next to me.
But if you're always on the go, you use your phone as your main media consumption device,
maybe you use navigation every day, this one is not gonna cut it.
That can always be fixed with a power bank or a wireless charger
in your car or something like that, but that's not really a good hack.
Definitely take the battery life into consideration if
you plan on picking up this phone for yourself.
That being said, if you're coming from an older iPhone let's say a 6s,
7 or an 8, it's still going to be a huge improvement for you.
But compared to some other models like the XR, 11 or 11 pro, it's not that great.
I couldn't think of a funny thing to say for this part of the video,
so just google funny quotes and go with whatever pops up.
You can pick up the iPhone 12 mini directly from Apple for $599
for a 64GB model or renewed from Amazon for $549.
While the 128GB model is $649 or $600 on Amazon.
And here's the thing, $599 is a great price for
this device as long as you don't mind the base 64GB storage option.
I personally always go with the base model, since I don't really
store my files on the phone locally. So 64GB is more than enough for me, but
if you do want to bring that storage up to 128GB,
I would actually recommend going for the iPhone 13 mini instead of the 12.
Here's the math...
Since the iPhone 13 mini brings that base storage from 64GB to 128GB
and it's currently $699, for the price difference of $50 between the 12 mini
and the 13 mini at that same storage capacity, I would just go with the 13.
You get some camera improvements but
more importantly you get much better battery life for a very similar price.
On the other hand, if 64GB is enough for you, the price difference between the 12 and the
13 mini jumps to $100 in which case picking up the iPhone 12 mini just makes much more sense.
Okay, that was a lot of numbers.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's end the review with a positive.
If you want a small, compact device that's going to last you a long time without having to worry
about upgrading, and you're not really a power user, the iPhone 12 mini is looking pretty good.
If you take the battery out of the equation, it's almost a perfect compact smartphone.
You get a complete modern Apple experience at
half the price of let's say something like iPhone 13 pro max.
If battery life and 64GB of storage is not enough, because you're too boss for that kind of stuff,
I would consider going with the 13 mini instead as long as you don't mind the price difference.
I'll leave some affiliate links in the description for
all models we talked about today if you want to check them out for yourself.
Thanks for watching!