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Comment by GarnetFloride | Hacker News Reader

What was so odd was how Apple fumbled the iPhone mini launch by launching the iPhone SE first. At that point there hadn't been a small phone for a few years, There was pent up demand. The SE came out and it was a big success, lots of people wanted ti because it was a small phone.

Then few months later they launched the mini expecting it to sell even more or something. Somehow they missed that everyone that wanted a small phone had just bought the SE, and it just wasn't long enough for them to be worth upgrading to the much better mini.

Had they waited for a year to pass the mini might have done much better because those who wanted a more powerful phone could find an excuse for an upgrade after a year, less then 6 months, not so much.

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This is my take as well. I bought the SE 2nd gen because of its size, a longer support cycle, and granular app permissions on iOS. It was my first iPhone and has probably been my last when its time is due.

My phone isn't some entertainment device, it's a utility tool. I don't need it to be "smart", it should be useful on the go. The persona sketched by GP just isn't me: Messaging, maps, weather, 2FA, and calculator come first, email (read only) and news feed second, the camera is a third for documenting purposes (if even, I'd rather take my full frame). The easier it is to carry this thing around and the longer lasting its build quality, the better. Why would I pay almost double (USD 699 VS 399 on launch) for a less robust mini with sharper edges?!

If Apple were to continue the offer of rehashed designs from previous generations (preferably with rounder edges) for a SE line, limit its dimensions to never go beyond 140x67.5x8mm, and make it last for solid 5-year release cycles, then count me in as your most loyal customer. As it currently stands I'm looking out for a small sized phone from any manufacturer. I would even lower my expectations on support cycle and build quality quite a bit (if reasonable priced) before I'd give in on the size.

I've been an iPhone user since late 2007. I current use an SE 2022 and love it.

I've gone iPhone -> 3GS -> 4 -> 5s -> 6s -> 7 -> SE 2020 -> SE 2022.

The Mini never interested me. I love the SE. I love the home button and TouchID. I love the traditional size. If I want more I have an iPad Pro (12.9" original 2015 model bought in 2015 -- the battery still lasts 2 weeks with my usage pattern) or M1 Mac Mini with a 32" 4k screen.

If they don't make a new SE model I don't know what I'll do. I guess, firstly, get a new battery for it before it's out of the support window. Maybe sometime next year. And then see how long app updates support whatever the last OS version it will run is.

The ONLY thing I'd change in my SE, if it was possible, is more than 4 GB of RAM. The latest models have 8 GB and the others at the time the SE was sold already had 6 GB.

With recent system updates I'm getting a lot more of applications restarting when I switch back to them. This is mostly not a huge problem, except that the X app loses your place in the "Following" stream if you're more than a few hours behind and the app reloads.

I'm still using a 13 mini, it's fractionally too large, I think the original SE is perfection.

Regardless, battery life is horrendous now, and it's starting to lag and fail so when the new ultra watch is released I'm going to replace my phone with it.

Getting the battery replaced fixed mine (and seemed to mildly improve system performance, although maybe that’s placebo), might be worth a shot if you like the form factor.

Depending on how degraded the original battery was it isn't necessarily placebo. If iOS detects a severely degraded battery it will clock down the CPU slightly to cope with it, sacrificing a little performance to keep the device stable.

With 3rd party batteries it can't do this, so it doesn't (I think, will admit I'm not entirely sure exactly how iOS deals with 3rd party batteries it can't determine the status of), and if you replaced it with an official part then it would have been in good condition, so regardless which road you took, it's possible that you went from a state where the OS was clocking down, to one where it wasn't anymore.

Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/101575

The problem is not the battery, it's the battery, processor and price.

The iPhone 13 Mini made up around 3% of total iPhone sales, so there's clearly a market for compact, mid-range phones ($600-$700). You can manufacture them in China or India for somewhere between $250 and $400, depending on the battery, camera, and overall performance.

The real challenge is that the retail price of a mid-range Android phone can't go over the $500 mark. People in developing countries are always stuck trying to balance quality with price. And for $500 bucks they expect a prime phone nowadays.

> If iOS detects a severely degraded battery it will clock down the CPU slightly

I currently have this problem (iPhone 11). It's not slight at all. Keyboard inputs sometimes has up to a full 1000ms latency and that's with autocorrect, suggestions, and spellcheck turned off. Scrolling in most apps are jumpy rather than smooth. When this phone dies, I don't know what I'll get. Hopefully a good linux phone exists by then.

That’s also a 6 year old device man, it is amazing that a device with such an old battery is still running at all, I presume its been a daily driver all this time?

it has a few dings on the frame and I'm not especially attached to the form factor more significantly I am addicted to it and need a viable alternative.

I still use my first gen SE and have had the battery replaced once.

Same here. Stuck with SE2 till it stopped catching pokemon properly. Currently pleased with the iPhone 13 mini. I think part of why I like small phones is I carry a laptop and hate web browsing / typing on the phone. It's mostly a modem and camera for me.

Also having a laptop means the battery doesn't matter that much as you can just charge it off that.

That makes sense.

I love my iPhone 13 Mini. Its only issues are battery life (now), and non-competitive camera. I'm personally happy with the photos it takes, but then I look at my girlfriend's shots and get FOMO.

While I doubt it's economical, I'd love a small, simple phone with juiced up camera. I'd be fine with worse battery life as external batteries can remedy that in a pinch.

I have a 12 mini, it's about as large a phone as I'd want. I wish the back and/or bezel were a little "grippier" as the phone as it's made is so slippery it almost demands a case, but that adds bulk.

Unlike many it seems, I don't care much about the camera. I'd probably want some sort of camera for scanning QR codes, or snapping a quick photo of something I want to look up later, but otherwise I don't take photos or videos on my phone. I don't use any social media on my phone other than text messaging. This makes the smaller battery size/capacity a non-issue.

Since Apple no longer makes a reasonably-sized phone I'll probably go back to Android after this one dies or becomes unsupported.

I also think it's silly to carry a $1,000 device around with you everywhere, so a "premium" small phone is probably a non-starter for me. My favorite phones were the ~$200 Moto-G phones I had before I got the iPhone (it was a gift).

I wish they made it thicker. It could easily fit better cameras and a bigger battery.

I don't know. I think the SE was there there to generate services income (Apps, Apple Music, etc.) from people who wouldn't buy an iPhone otherwise. The design was intentionally very stale to avoid cannibalization of their flagships. I don't think a lot of people who bought flagship iPhones before would go to an SE. Imagine going from an iPhone X or XS to an SE, it's a big downgrade. People were not buying the SE because of the size, but because it was cheap (the iPhone 16e that is the cheaper model now, has the same size as the 16).

My wife, I, and several people I know had iPhone 12 or 13 Mini. Their battery life was pretty terrible and word soon got out it was. I think this was in the end what killed it for people who are normally buying Apple flagships and were considering a Mini. It was very hard to get through the day with a Mini.

Besides the abysmal battery life, I think the market for small phones is maybe simply not there. Samsung keeps around one smaller model (base S-series) and arguably the Z Flip is a smaller model (but persistent hardware issues). If there was a large demand for flagship-class small phones, I am sure some Android manufacturers would make them.

They could have made the SE large but slow (instead of small and slow) and avoided all cannibalization future and present.

My hypothesis about the supposed non-existence of the small phone buyer is that they very much do exist (personally, haven't bought anything other than whatever was the smallest Xperia at the time in more than a decade), but that this group has little overlap with the group willing to buy for list price on release day. But the perception of success of a given phone is very much dominated by the latter, the long tail of buyers isn't really seen. Even if the release day premium over mid-lifecycle street price (in countries where price fixing is not allowed) goes to the retailer and is of very little interest to the manufacturer.

Manufacturers should just move compacts to a three year cycle and forget everything about hyper-optimizing desirability for the kind of buyer who spends too much time reading questionable review sites.

I’ve never had battery issues with my mini. But then again, I just want an unobtrusive tool. You can make a lot more money selling phones that are targeted to compulsive/addictive “whales” than you make selling normal phones for normal people.

Your theory makes sense until it falls apart if you consider SE and Mini as the same category of small iPhones. If the only reason why Mini failed was bad launch time, then why haven't Apple launched anything small (SE or Mini) after 2022? Isn't 2024 or even 2025 the perfect time to launch an upgrade for SE or Mini? They now have enough data since the last launch of a small phone.

iPhone SE 1st gen 2016 (Discontinued 2018)

iPhone 12 Mini 2020 (Discontinued 2022)

iPhone SE 2nd gen 2020 (Discontinued 2022)

iPhone 13 Mini 2021 (Discontinued 2023)

iPhone SE 3rd gen 2022 (Discontinued 2025)

I can confirm, that Apple my misunderstood the market: I was eager to buy a new iPhone because I just finished my masters degree and started a new job, had a bit of money and than the SE2 launched. My 5s or SE1 started to age and as an beginner app developer a current phone was important. I was so happy because I could not see my self using one of those bigger phones even though the SE2 was still bigger than my 5s/SE1. A few months later the mini was released and my initial reaction was "OMG this is THE perfect phone, but I just got a new one... i can not afford to buy another one".

The problem is that people who want a small phone prioritize the size.

Most of them don't care about the premium features of larger phones. So the Mini was a weird niche within a niche. Small phone with premium price and features.

The Mini and SE2 were virtually identical in physical size. For the 16e they should have used the iPhone 12/13 Mini body and the 13 Mini screen. Use the 15 Pro SoC with 8GB memory, and the 15 camera. Sell it for an SE price. Now you have fused the small phone and budget iPhone markets.

Exactly. When my 13 Mini dies I'll buy the smallest iPhone at any price, whether low or high.

The iPhone 13 mini had even worse performance than the iPhone 12 mini even though it wasn't released alongside an SE.

This is so true. I switch from iPhone 5s to iPhone SE to iPhone 13 mini. After my current phone dies I don't know what phone would I get next.

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