Hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and the iphone 12 mini has been out for a few months
and lately there's been a lot of talk about it saying how that it's sort of a failure or it's
not meeting apple's expectations iphone 12 mini is still a great phone and this is a three to four
month follow-up long-term review and the first thing is apparently apple overestimated the demand
of the 12 mini the 12 mini is basically a smaller version of the 12 it's just everything is the same
except the overall size so it's something a lot of people have been wanting for a long time and
i think the main complaint comes from the consumer intelligence research partners who said that the
mini made up only 5 to 15 percent of total iphone 12 sales and that is actually a huge number that a
lot of phone companies would be happy with in fact apple sells about 200 million phones a year or so
which is an incredible amount and that would be about 10 million phones on the low end
if it was all iphone 12 sales that were that we're talking about so either way it could be a separate
business in itself so it's not a failure from a sales performer performance standpoint but it
may not live up to apple's larger expectations of what we get with the 12 pro or 12 pro max or 12.
now this particular phone is really appealing to a lot of people who really miss the smaller
phones such as the iphone 5 that i have here where the size is really small compact it's
easy to fit in your pocket and it's just easy to use and then when you want to use a larger screen
you can move to an ipad or a mac for example or maybe you just don't want something as huge as a
12 pro max the iphone 12 mini is the right size for a lot of people and the people i know that
have one absolutely love their phone and would love to see apple continue to make them for years
and according to apple or some recent leaks it seems like we're going to get a 13 mini or 12s
mini and i think apple will continue to make it for a while at least because the people that have
one absolutely love it and price wise it's not as much as say iphone 12 pro and as you can see here
depending on how you configure it whether that's sim free or not and depending on the size that you
get it can go anywhere from about 700 up to 879. unfortunately apple charges a little bit extra for
that additional unlocked or carrier unlocked sim free version where it's 30 more than you would get
it from say t-mobile for example at 6.99 so they add 30 for that so that's something i don't really
like but it's just a little bit of a incentive i suppose to go with your carrier on that side
now as far as its durability well it's been pretty durable in fact this has been really
good i've been using it on and off and you can see it's held up really well i've been using
it with this slip case no problems here and the overall durability seems to be fine this aluminum
on the outside edge is really nice the squared off design makes it much easier to hold i think
than the rounded designs that we had before and the overall button placement and everything is
fine especially if you have larger hands like me you can just press the button with my thumb right
here and it just fits in the hand nicely a lot of people that have smaller hands like it a lot since
it's very easy to manage now the glass on the phone has been very durable and i think this is
because not only is this using ceramic shield this year where it's more durable if you drop the phone
but also because it's recessed or down into the frame of the phone i think this helps a
lot when you're putting this in your pocket or just slipping it into maybe a wallet or a purse
or some sort of other case i think it helps a lot based on it being recessed versus what we
had last year where it stuck out over the edge and seemed to scratch much more easily on all
of the iphone 12s this year i've seen very few if any scratches whatsoever that weren't from
bumping this into something metal for example so in general they're holding up really well you'll
not see a single scratch on this and any of the iphone 12s i've seen have really had no scratches
and of course you could use a screen protector and that would fix all of those issues but it seems to
be very durable compare compared to previous years and the iphone 11 series phones for example now as
far as its display that's something that is great this year it's not compromised in any way shape or
form and the display is a super retina xdr display it's super bright of course goes up to 1200 nits
when playing hdr content but regularly around 600 nits or so 625 nits and it can play hdr youtube
videos so even though it's not a 4k display what you get is the 4k bitrate which gives you
more information so it could be a cleaner image overall and then you can play hdr so for example
in one of my videos here we'll just rotate this i'll turn it down and you'll see it will look
super bright on this display because this video is not in hdr but i think you get the
idea that you can play hdr footage if i turn it way down you may be able to see it a little bit
but the footage is nice and crisp and bright and it's great to see apple including these on
all of their phones this time around so having high-end displays on everything that do 60 hertz
is really a great thing we don't really compromise at all with this display you've got the same great
speakers that you get on all the other phones with the stereo sound when you're holding it this way
it's got great stereo sound out of the speakers on the bottom as well as the top here and you get
great reception it's got a 5g modem in it with the millimeter wave antenna if you have that in your
country i personally don't have that but depending where you live it's going to vary but in general
it's a really great modem i haven't had any call drops or anything and that's been the case across
all the phones including the 12 pro max the 12 pro the 12. it seems much better than we've had before
the camera is also really phenomenal in fact the video that i showed you here just a moment ago
under youtube was filmed with an iphone now it's not the same iphone but they all have the
same sort of camera capabilities we have 4k hdr dolby vision hdr and then we have a wide-angle
lens you're not really missing much with the telephoto lens unless you go beyond say 2x for
example because in many situations in bright light apple will use the main camera for the photos
even if they're zoomed into 2x and then as the light dims a little bit then it will switch to
the other camera you can try this by putting your finger over it in bright light and you'll see that
even when you go to 2x it's using the same camera now on the main camera of a 12 pro max for example
you've got three and you're not really missing out so here's the 1x camera if i put my finger over it
then i'll go to 2.5 and my finger is still covering the same one but because we have bright
light it's trying to use that one as you zoom in it can shift to the different cameras depending on
lighting situations so you're really not missing a whole lot when you zoom into 2x for example
so you've got the advantage of both cameras the one thing you don't get of course is 4k 60 hdr
in the settings so if you go down to your camera settings for example we'll go to camera you've
got 4k 60 but not in hdr video as you can see here it says record up to 30 frames per second video in
10 bit high dynamic range including dolby vision so you can leave it on 4k 60 when you hit record
in hdr then it will go to 30 frames per second so that's one thing you don't get with this and the
other big compromise for this particular phone is its battery life battery life in general has
gotten very good on these phones in general thanks to the newer a14 bionic chipsets which is not
lacking here at all it's super fast here you're not going to see any issues however as far as
the battery goes you are going to see a little bit of a difference the battery life is
okay on this phone and in order to show you real world usage i wanted to reach out to someone that
actually uses it full time since the day it came out and that's actually my brother so what i did
is i had him take screenshots of his phone he charges it every night all night and you'll see
the maximum capacity of his battery health is 100 percent so he's using just a normal
lightning connector charging every night all night no problems there since the day it released
also you'll see here's his battery life over time so he took a screenshot of this only a few minutes
ago and then also you can see some of the usage here however this is over the last 10 days and a
few days ago that's some of his highest usage where he used almost 100 of his battery life
and he got four hours and 53 minutes of screen on time and an hour and 36 minutes of screen off time
what i've seen from most people is that the iphone 12 mini is getting about five hours of screen on
time and this seems to be fairly common so five to five and a half hours is normal and i think
most people would be happy with this unless they're just a power user and really using it
constantly but that's an average user using it day to day as their main communication device
but not gaming on it for example you also get fast charging and you've got magsafe this year as well
magsafe works well but on the mini it charges a little bit slower around 12 watts instead of
that 15 watts that you get with the larger phones that's just due to the smaller battery capacity
but because the battery's smaller they charge in the same amount of time where you're going to get
about 50 percent of your charge in 30 minutes using the lightning connector and a little bit
slower with magsafe but you have the option for this as well as accessories and cases in this sort
of slip style case where you slide it into place it recognizes it and then shows you the time so
it works with magsafe as well and it will charge and show you all that information here the 12 mini
is really nice not being left out from all of the major features that you see with the bigger phones
and i think this is a great trend to see apple continue hopefully for many years and i know
that those that have absolutely love their phones and don't want a bigger phone so this makes a lot
of sense to continue even if it is only five to fifteen percent of phones that's still millions
and millions of devices so we'll have to wait and see what apple does in the future here
but i think this is a great phone it's a great purchase if you're deciding whether or not you
should pick up an iphone 12 mini i would highly recommend it if you like a phone of this size
and the battery is not a problem for you as long as you don't use more than five hours of screen on
time or have a charger nearby or maybe in your car i think you'll be pretty happy with it you're not
compromising with speed cameras or anything more but let me know what you think about the iphone 12
mini in the comments below i think it's a great phone for certain people it's not for everyone
but it's for those that really liked the five but want all of the features of the latest devices
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