My 5 Favorite Things About the iPhone 12 Mini
By: Megan Holstein
Tags: Gadgets, Minimalism, Digital Life, Apple, Technology

My 5 Favorite Things About the iPhone 12 Mini

When the iPhone 12 mini was announced, I wrote a piece called The iPhone 12 Mini is the iPhone for Digital Minimalists. It was essentially a statement about how excited I was to buy an iPhone that would be useful when I used it and fit in my pocket when I didn’t use it.

But as launch day approached, I felt increasingly stressed about the purchase. The truly minimalist thing to do is keep what you already own. My iPhone X wasn’t cracked or totally broken, but it was on the fritz, and it was beginning to hang during processes and present annoying usability errors. But it still worked, goddamnit, and I didn’t want to buy a new phone when my old one worked.

So launch day came and went without me buying an iPhone 12 mini.

But the universe soon corrected me on my error. During launch week, I was traveling to Denver to stay with a friend and catch up. While my friend was at work, I decided to borrow her truck and take a scenic drive through the mountains. And of course, in the middle of a state I’m not familiar with on roads I could easily get very lost on, my phone decided simply not to function anymore. The entire unit froze.

The first thing I thought? “This wouldn’t be happening if I’d bought the damn 12 mini.”

So after I got down the mountain, before even going home, I stopped by a Best Buy and placed an order for my new phone.

And damn, am I glad I did — because this phone is fucking awesome.

My favorite things about it, from least to most:

5. The sound quality is fantastic

One of the first things I noticed about the phone was, of all things, the speakerphone quality. The speakers on this tiny unit are really, really good.

For nearly the entire three years I owned my iPhone X, it seemed the speakers on one side of the phone were broken. I don’t recall ever dropping it in a way that would cause such a problem, but the speakers were always weak and tinny. It wasn’t a big deal to me because I always used bluetooth headphones, but it was annoying when taking calls on speakerphone or playing music in a car with no internal speakers.

The iPhone 12 mini doesn’t have that problem. Despite being a substantially smaller unit, the 12 mini has substantially more powerful speakers.

When I picked up a call from my mom and played it for my dad and I on the highway, her voice rang loud and clear. When I play music in my white panel van that has no internal speakers, I can hear the music clearly. In my quiet apartment, one could even call it loud.

I’m one of those people that likes to put their phone on speakerphone a lot. If someone calls me when I’m not alone, I like to share my conversations with those around me. I also like to be that person who talks into their speakerphone like they don’t know how to use a phone. Great speakerphone quality was an unexpected and welcome blessing.

I didn’t buy the 12 mini because I thought it would have great sound quality. But it was certainly welcome.

4. The camera is surprisingly good

As someone who doesn’t have Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, or any other social media, the quality of a phone camera is very low on my list of priorities. I do use my phone camera occasionally to take quality photos of things I care about, but I mostly use it to take photos of things I want to remember, like book names or receipt numbers.

But t he iPhone 12 mini — paired with Apple’s photos app — can produce a damn good photo.

No doubt these photos are not as good as what the iPhone 12 Pro lineup can produce. But for someone who is not a professional photographer or social media influencer, the iPhone 12 mini camera is really quite stunning.

Stunning enough, in fact, that this modern Luddite is considering actually using their camera for taking photos of friends and loved ones instead of just grocery store receipts. For the first time since I deleted social media, I’ll be using a phone camera for what it’s meant for. Imagine that!

Any smartphone with a camera good enough to get me taking phone photos is definitely a good smartphone camera.

3. Great for encouraging deep work

The larger the phone, the more distracting it is. Large phones encourage you to spend a lot of time consuming content than small phones do. If you’re trying to get deep work done, being sucked into the content cycling machine that is your smartphone is anathema.

As Angela Lashbrook pointed out in “The Big Disadvantage of Small Phones Like the iPhone Mini,” small phones are not great for people who are power users of their phone. Smaller screens inhibit your ability to retain information. But most digital minimalists are not trying to use their phone for that! We’re trying to get off our phones, either to work on the desktop or focus on the one precious life we have in front of us.

The iPhone 12 mini is an excellent phone precisely because it doesn’t encourage content consumption. The small and portable form factor encourages you to put your phone down and move to your production environment for deep work, which is where you should be trying to perform deep work in the first place.

2. You don’t need a purse just to carry it around

One of the things that has annoyed me most about iPhones over the past six or seven years has been the sheer physical size.

There was a time when my decision about whether to purchase a particular pair of pants, jacket, or coat was ultimately decided by one question: Can my gigantic phone fit in these pockets?

Invariably, the answer was no. Maybe clothes for six foot tall men would accomodate these phones, but my Women’s XS/Boys XL Husky clothes did not. This always left me asking the question “What purse should I buy to carry my phone?”

This question always leaves me feeling incredibly dysphoric. I like to dress in masculine styles, and nothing undercuts my attempt to look masculine more than carrying a purse. As a result, I spent an inordinate amount of time shopping online for the most masculine purse-sized bag I could find. (Spoiler: Such a thing does not exist.) All this because Apple wouldn’t make a smaller damn phone.

Most people can’t relate to feelings of dysphoria triggered by phone size, but most people can relate to feeling annoyed about having to carry a purse or bag just to accomodate an insensibly large phone. There are plenty of women (and men, and nonbinary people) who have taken to carrying purses or bags just to have somewhere to put their large smartphone.

With the iPhone 12 mini, that limitation is gone. The iPhone 12 mini always fits in the pockets of my pants. It always fits in my coat. Wherever I want to go, no matter what I want to wear or do, the iPhone 12 mini can go with me.

What’s more, I don’t worry about the phone sliding out of my pocket either. When I did try to stuff those too-large phones in my pocket, they would often do this thing where the top half would quickly slide out of my pocket. Then, as I sat down, my phone took advantage of my angled hips to escape into the chair, floor, or couch cushions. I’ve spent too long in my life searching for a phone that made an escape when I sat down somewhere.

The iPhone 12 mini never tries to make the great escape. It never peeks it’s top half precipitously out of my pocket, threatening to fall and shatter on the ground. It never slides out of my pocket when I sit, leaving itself wedged between couch cushions. It stays in my pocket, where it’s f-cking supposed to be.

If you are, like me, a tiny person who has always been frustrated by the disproportionately large size of smartphones, you will love the iPhone 12 mini.

1. The iPhone 12 mini fits in my hand

One of the things strangers love to comment on about me is my hands. At 5’2”, I’m already a small person, and my hands are small even for someone my size. They like to point at my hands and say “ooh, your hands are so tiny!” Sometimes they grab my hands without my permission, or they put their hand palm-to-palm with mine and revel in how small my fingers are compared to theirs.

My tiny hands are great when someone drops their credit card between the seats of their car because my tiny hands are always able to rescue it, but my tiny hands aren’t great for handling smartphones. While most other people can use a smartphone with one hand, I need both. If I try to pick up a smartphone and use it with one hand, it invariably counterbalances and tips out of my grasp. To counteract this, I’ve invested a lot of money in shock-proof cases over the last few years.

For the first time since 2013, I own an iPhone I can actually use. Instead of having to pick it up with both hands and peck like an eighty year old, I can pick it up and use it with one hand.

This seemingly small change has opened up a world of usability. I can pick up a phone call while walking down the street holding a cup of tea. I only have to take off one glove to use my phone in winter weather. I can use my phone while walking, instead of having to come to a standstill to type. These seemingly little obstacles routinely added friction to my life, and they are finally gone.

No doubt this small change seems like it’s not that big a deal, but for a device I will use 1–3 hours a day for the next 2–5 years, for a total of 2,190 hours, it’s important I’m able to use it effectively.