iPhone 12 mini: Small is beautiful

Smartphones with bigger displays have been ruling the world for the past couple of years. There is a pretty good reason behind it. A bigger display means more space, and more space comes with the ability to view more contents.

But in the process of making the display bigger and bigger, smartphones have reached a limit where it became almost impossible to use most of the phones with one hand, and thus the necessity of smaller displays came into play.

In a market full of big display smartphones, Apple finally heard the cries of the users who valued one handed-usability and having a phone that they can fit into their pants pockets with comfort.

But make no mistake, while Apple’s new iPhone 12 mini may have that “mini” at the end of its name, it did not sacrifice in any place, especially when it comes to the performance.

iPhone 12 mini uses the same 5 nanometres (nm) A14 Bionic chipset that’s in the regular iPhone 12. It has the same 4 core Apple GPU inside.

Even in the camera section, it’s the same. Both iPhone 12 and the miniature version of it has a dual-camera setup with optical image stabilization (OIS) feature. The sensors are the same and both of them offers the same image and video quality.

But the reduced size came with a little compromise. It was kind of obvious, to be honest. With the reduced display size, the battery in iPhone 12 mini also got shrunk. While the regular iPhone 12 has a 2815 mAh lithium-ion battery, the mini has a 2227 mAh battery. The fast wireless charging capability also reduced by a little. The iPhone 12 supports 15 watts Qi fast wireless charging while the mini version supports 12 watts.

What can compensate that sacrifice, a few may ask? Well, the base variant of iPhone 12 mini costs $729 (around Tk62,000), a $100 less than the price of iPhone 12.

If you are planning to buy an iPhone, prefer smaller form factors and often worry about a dislocated thumb, that’s a deal you should not miss by any means.