I’ve owned plenty of mobile phones over the years. My current daily driver is iPhone 13 Mini, sporting a bright, funky, and cheap OIIAEE Silicone Case. Look at it. It’s gorgeous (ignore the notification badge count, please).
Picture taken with the potato camera on my old OnePlus 5.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my favourite phones include the flyweight Nokia 6600 (2.1"), bantamweight N82 (2.4") and featherweight iPhone 4s (3.5"). All were very compact devices, some with tiny displays.
By comparison, the iPhone 13 Mini has a commodious 5.4" screen! It’s enormous! It’s positively cumbersome, right!?
No. It’s the Goldilocks of phones. Not too big, not too small, and warm like porridge.
I have actually owned a few phones with slightly larger screens, but I don’t enjoy using them. Larger phones are hard to hold, store, and manipulate. The user interfaces on them are harder to use, too. I don’t have massive dinner-plate hands. Nor are my digits demonstrably dainty.
Everyone around me has phablets, and they’re all awful. In the last month, a few people have looked at, poked, or picked up my phone and said, “I don’t know how you can use this‽”. Yes you do! Everyone knows. We all had phones this size up until a few years ago.
To be clear, I’m not one of these smartphone refuseniks who only use the device to make telephone calls (remember those?) and click dodgy links in SMS messages. I use modern applications and view content in landscape and portrait without worries or eyestrain.
So with the announcement of the new iPhone 15 range of heavyweights - Hefty, Maximus, and Colossus, the Mini was nowhere to be seen.
I know, of course, that we didn’t get an iPhone 14 Mini either last time around but hope springs eternal.
The iPhone 13 Mini was originally launched on September 14th 2021. Two years ago, almost to the day. If experience is anything to go by, I should expect software and security updates from Apple until 2026.
What then?
Will I be that guy who keeps hold of his beaten-up phone for a decade, refusing to trade it in, or take it for repair, for fear it will be lost forever. Maybe I should buy up a few spares, just in case.
Or perhaps I’ll be that other guy who cares for his phone so meticulously that it forever looks like the day it was made.
I’ll be honest, the former is more likely than the latter.
Sony has made some delightful devices for the smaller-appendage human. But I don’t think I will go back to Android, just for a modest device. However, I don’t want a slab of a device in my pocket.
Maybe I need to get banged up in prison. I hear they have very small phones in there.