Apple’s iPhone 12 mini’s Battery Life is Amazing
By: Lance Ulanoff
Tags: iPhone, Iphone 12 Mini, iOS, Apple, Technology

Apple’s iPhone 12 mini’s Battery Life is Amazing

Holding Apple’s iPhone 12 mini

I’m the Goldilocks of iPhone customers. I don’t want the iPhone 12 Pro Max because the 6.7-inch screen and body is too much for me and my pants pocket — its clean, curved body always poking out over the top of my pocket edge. Similarly, I’ve steered clear of the smaller phones like the iPhone 12 mini, mostly because I’ve been spoiled by the just-right, mid-sized iPhone 11 Pro and now its successor, the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 Pro.

My fascination with mid-sized phones (a decade ago they would’ve been considered “big-screen” phones) is a relatively new phenomenon. I carried the tiny iPhone 4s with its 3.5-inch screen for years. The extra half-inch I got on the iPhone 5s a little later seemed like a big deal. Now, we think nothing of carrying 6-inch-plus displays and, thanks to edge-to-edge screen technology, it’s possible to carry a near 7-inch iPhone without the body being almost comically large.

The trend is to go big and it was easy for me to dismiss the adorable iPhone 12 mini, especially because it only has two cameras: the wide and 120-degree ultra-wide (you need to go Pro to get the optical zoom lens).

It’s so small

What’s more, I worried that the 5.18 in. x 2.53 in. x 0.29 in. body couldn’t accommodate enough battery to support a day of activity. Apple doesn’t publish battery sizes and instead promises in its tech specs “Up to 15 hours of video playback” (10 hours if I’m streaming). Video run-down tests are fine, but I realized I needed a real-world test to see if the iPhone 12 mini is suitable for my real world.

The night before my test, I made sure to fully charge the iPhone 12 mini on a wireless MagSafe charger. To Apple’s credit, aside from size and cameras, the iPhone 12 mini shares virtually all the same specs with its larger and more expensive counterparts. It has the aforementioned magnetic, wireless charging capability, ceramic display covering the Super Retina Display, a TrueDepth module that supports Face ID, and includes a 12 MP camera. It has the same IP68 ratings (6 meters for 30 minutes), the powerful A14 Bionic CPU, and, of course, 5G. In fact, there’s never been a smaller and thinner 5G phone (if you're into that kind of thing).

8:13 AM: The next morning, I snatched the iPhone 12 mini off the charging pad.

The switch from a larger phone to this little one was unsettling. It felt like almost nothing in my hand. At 134 grams, it’s 30 grams lighter than the iPhone 12 and almost 60 grams lighter than the iPhone 12 Pro. I found myself gingerly cradling it with two hands as if I were holding a little baby Yoda.

While not the highest resolution screen in the iPhone 12 family, the mini has, at 476 ppi, the highest pixel density. I stared at the 5.4-inch screen, wondering if I could get used to it. Everything looked sharp but tiny. Almost immediately, I struggled with typing on the small virtual keyboard. The high resolution made me wonder if my fingers had swelled overnight. I was surprised to find that Apple had not disabled Reachability (a sweep motion just above the home bar pulls the screen image halfway down the display for better thumb reachability).

This would be an adjustment.

The trick, I found, was sticking with the iPhone 12 mini until it felt natural. I did my best not to look at or pick up a larger screen phone.

Apple’s iPhone 12 mini’s screen is 5.4-inches, which is larger than what you’ll find on an iPhone 8.

I used the phone to peruse tweets, read news, and plan a quick excursion to a hardware store. I even let Apple maps guide me to my destination. By this time, I didn't mind that my on-screen directions were on a smaller screen. It looked sharp and I could hear Siri’s instructions loud and clear.

As I got out of my car, I slipped the iPhone into my pocket and walked into the store. A few minutes later, I needed to check the phone and, in a near panic started frantically patting all my pockets. I couldn't feel the phone and thought I’d lost it. In fact, it was simply sitting sideways at the bottom of one pocket, something that would be impossible with the iPhone 12 Pro.

1:40 PM: I arrived back home and noted the iPhone battery power was at 70%.

By this time, I’d stopped thinking about the phone’s size and realized that whatever physical real estate I lost was made up by the iPhone 12 mini’s impressive screen resolution. My only complaint is that, on a phone of this size, Apple’s TrueDepth appears to run almost the full width of the screen.

In the afternoon, I checked and responded to mail, made some edits to a Medium post, posted an Instagram photo, and spent a lot of time on Twitter. I even watched a SpaceX Starship test launch (and crash). The video looked amazing on the little screen. I also took some photos with the front and rear cameras. These two lenses are exactly the same as the ones I’ve tried on the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max and the image quality is just as good.