So long, tiny dancer

We’ll miss you iPhone mini, come back soon

As widely rumored, Apple discontinued the mini-sized iPhone last week. It was my favorite.

I’ve been a (mostly) happy iPhone customer since I saw the original in person over the summer ’07. I’ve never been an “upgrade every year” guy, or even every-other-year; but I’ve ended up with a new one every three or four years as batteries run down and the software baseline outstrips the aging hardware.

My least favorite thing about them is that they’ve gotten so big.

My all-time favorite form factor was the 5s. Bigger than the original, but still easily used in one hand. (And still had the headphone jack!) I loved the flat sides and all-glass front—in my mind, that’s the classic look. The iPhone’s version of the ’67 corvette.

My least favorite, by comparison, was my next phone, the iPhone 8. Too big, too clunky, I deeply disliked the overly thin body and rounded edges. Of course, that design, originally from the 6, ended up as their longest-running design, becoming the soft of default iPhone look for most people.

And they just kept getting bigger. Pros, Maxes. I’ve got decently large male hands, and I found the new ones uncomfortable to use. I like using my phone in one hand, I like keeping it in my pants pocket all day. The larger phones got, the less I could use them like I wanted.

Then, they announced the 12 mini—not only a return to the classic design language, but back to the smaller size! Finally. I pre-ordered it on the day of the announcement, something I had never done before.

The weird thing about it was that this came along with Apple solidifying the iPhones into two sub lines—“regular” and “pro”, with some significant differences between the two around the camera and other features. Each subline got two phones, the standard model, and then the Pros got the frankly obnoxiously large Pro Max, and the non-Pro got the smaller mini. Other than the size the two sizes of each subline were identical—except for the size of the battery, which expanded or contracted to fit the volume available.

And this seemed to trip the whole thing up. There seemed to be a lot of pent-up demand for a smaller phone, but the reality wasn’t quite what anyone expected. I knew more than a few people that that wanted a smaller phone, but weren’t willing to give up the “good” camera. On top of that, the 12 mini had shockingly poor battery life compared to it’s immediate predecessors, and I think it was real easy to sigh and buy the bigger one.

In addition, and uncharacteristically for Apple, the marketing on the mini seemed almost non-existant; it seemed like the original release of the 12 mini flopped, and then they threw up their hands and grudgingly went through with the plans they already had for a 13 mini but no more.

And in a lot of ways, “Mini” was the tell. In Apple-speak, the small-but-good models end with “Air”. Mini was the term they used for the smaller, cheaper iPods; no one thought those were as good as the “regular” iPods, those were the ones you bought because you needed something cheap or needed something really, really small. Everyone I knew with an iPod mini had one as their “other” iPod, they one they jogged with, not the one they ran the party playlist with. But that doesn’t apply to iPhones, you don’t have your “other” iPhone you take jogging.

So, for the 14 models, they replaced the “other non-pro phone” with the 14 Plus, which was a 14 but a little bigger, a phone even less people wanted. Rumor has it that it’s not just the mini, but the all the non-pro phones that have lower-than-expected sales, with the 14 plus having even worse sales than the 13 mini. Apple likes their 2 or 3 year production cycles, it’ll be interesting to see what iPhones 17 look like. Personally, I think a Pro Mini would sell like gangbusters—that’s something you could sell as an iPhone Air, and charge extra for. But I don’t manage a major consumer electronics company.

Faced with the rumors that the mini form factor wasn’t long for this world, I upgraded to a 13 mini earlier this year, the first time I’ve ever done a year-over-year upgrade, and the first time I upgraded to “last year’s” model.

And that’s gonna be it for a while. It’s my absolute favorite size the phone has ever had, and I’ll upgrade to a bigger device over my dead body.

Here’s hoping they bring a small size back before the battery in this one quits working.