Myself and the people who said we wanted a smaller phone may be a vocal minority but we did buy the small phone when we were offered it. After I used the 12 mini for 2 years, I bought a 14 Pro since no mini was offered in the 14 generation, but I returned it a week later cause it was too big/heavy and bought a 13 mini. These days I'm using a 16 Pro since no mini is offered and the titanium did help a lot with the weight issue, but if they brought back mini phones I'd happily sacrifice the camera for a reasonably sized screen.
Plus almost everyone who says they want a smaller phone will just buy a larger one anyway.
The sales numbers just don't justify it. Like people who pine for manual transmissions: they're vocal in car forums and publications but they're a tiny minority and making one is a money-loser even in the sports car segment.
I'm not much of a car person but I thought stick shift also had the benefits of:
1. engine braking
2. being able to jump start a car with a dead battery by pushing it down a hill while turning the ignition and shifting into 2nd gear (which my sister successfully did after school one day).The last time I bought a phone I chose Samsung S22, which was way out of my initially intended budget, for the sole reason that there were not any smaller options available below its price range.
The problem is that smaller phones are usually fundamentally flawed in ways that aren’t about the smaller screen. Whether it’s a worse CPU, worse camera or smaller battery, people are almost never making their purchasing decision based on screen size with all else being equal. I don’t think we can conclude that most people who ask for a smaller screen don’t really want one because many just don’t want a slow phone that takes worse photos and dies by midafternoon.
I think there needs to be a recognition that bigger screens aren’t only about the bigger screens. They’re also about giving phone designers more internal space to cram in components and a larger battery.
Even with the smaller battery, iOS is so aggressive with background tasks anyway, the iPhone 12 mini was my first iPhone and I got better battery life with it than any of my Androids I used over the span of a decade, even giant ones like the Nexus 6P, despite obsessively trying to install background task killer solutions and whatnot that were supposed to save on battery.
There was very little sacrifice with the mini iPhones, for the first time in modern "small" smartphones
It's only a small number compared to Apple's total number of iPhones sold which is an astronomical stat to compare to. I don't think it's fair to compare mini phone demand against total iPhone sales.
iPhone 16 Pro = Weight 199 g (7.02 oz)
The weight difference (7 grams) seems negligible
Also the 17 Pro will now be aluminum which is even lighter than titanium, so it should be a bit lighter than the 16 Pro I think.
Also bought used iPhone SE (2016) in 2019 and 2020 - both time from (UX) designers - but the same people also ride bicycles, trains - or if car, really reflect their user requirements - be it a small EV or a van for vanlife.
Average consumers just buy the largest, most marketed (high margin) or "whatever the neighbour has" option - aka SUV or Pro Max.
I don't buy this. The iPhone 13 Mini all by itself sold 6 million units in a year. That's about half the rate of Google's entire Pixel lineup. The market is small, yeah, but it definitely exists. I think a company could quietly make a high quality, straightforward, small Android device with maybe every-other-year hardware updates, and run away with a whole corner of the market all to itself.
For example, if 5.9 million of those 6 million people would have bought the larger iPhone model anyway, then you didn't actually gain much by offering the Mini unit.
I have no idea what those numbers are, though.
I know this probably is how the decisions get made. Especially if the alternative has a higher profit margin. I just have to say I think the world is worse for it.
And it only works when there are notable deficits in competition. Otherwise a company with less to cannibalize would make the smaller model and get themselves 3-6 million sales.
If nothing else, you could still give the mini a higher margin and make some gains that way.
If they don't offer a smaller phone, you'll eventually buy a bigger phone. Once you are in camp big phone, you'll probably be back on the 2-5 year device treadmill. And you'll be spending more on the big phones.
Apple is in a continuous state of not giving their customers what they want.
A convertible Macbook with a touch screen and dual MacOS/IOS personalities would sell out. They will never make it because no one will ever buy an iPad again.
A high quality TV with Apple TV built in at a premium but reasonable price would sell like hotcakes. It would compete with Apple Cinema displays, however.
A basic "good enough" 5 inch phone for $499 would also sell fast.
Apple won't do these things because you'd be happier but spend less.
With HDMI CEC controls, there is no benefit to anyone by combining Apple TV with a display. Plus almost all displays support Airplay these days.
> A basic "good enough" 5 inch phone for $499 would also sell fast.
This was the iPhone SE sold for many years until Feb 2025. It started at $430. It’s unfortunate they got rid of it for a 6inch 16E, but it is pretty reasonable on price at $600.
If you were a person that likes Apple TV, I imagine it would be nice to have a TV that was just that rather than a TV with whatever smartness the maker insisted on, plus a standalone Apple TV. (Even nicer would be a TV without smarts, but those seem to be extinct)
Apple TV has by far the fastest processor in a TV set-top box. The interface is much cleaner and faster than any smart TV. And I'm sure Apple could do best in class 4k or 8k AI upscale, and live AI captioning w/ translation. They also have the lawyers needed to do some of the AI transformation and deal with the inevitable lawsuits from copyright holders.
They are probably also smart enough to class it as a "smart monitor", delete the TV tuners, and avoid lots of local regulatory requirements that way.
Could be a very competitive product as long as the price is no worse than Sony Bravia.
But from all reports that you can find with a quick search it seems clear that it did not sell well by Apple standards.
I would love them to bring it back and I’m not sure what it is about the Hacker News crowd that makes this phone over-represented. Maybe the tech crowd also uses laptops more, so we think of phones as our “small device” and use other devices more as appropriate?
Yeah. The question I'm trying to answer is not "does it make sense for Apple to make a small phone?", but rather "does it make sense for anyone to make a small phone?" I'm using the 13 Mini's sales data as evidence, because it is the one and only small phone made in the past decade or so.
Maybe I'm just incredibly naive but I have this small hope that we'll see a return to smaller phones that are trifolds for when you need the real estate.
Smaller phones are used by people who use it less.
I have only anecdotal data, pretty sure google has the analytics to find that out.
They probably figure if they stop making them then most people will reluctantly move to a bigger model.
It is only your blind ego that is making you incorrectly assume these things about other people.