

After years of putting up with an awkward phone grip and basking in the glow of a big screen, would a smaller phone feel like coming home? Or would I have been so changed by the last six years that the phone I had desired would end up being a disappointment? Unlike the iPhone SE die-hards, I had upgraded to the iPhone 6 size class, then the iPhone X, and just accepted the trade of a larger display in exchange for a phone that felt less comfortable to hold. When I started using it full-time, though, I wasn’t convinced that I’d want to use a smaller phone. Thanks to the new 2020 iPhone design language, itself a throwback to the iPhone 4/5 era, holding an iPhone 12 mini in my hand sure brings back all those iPhone 5 feelings. But it’s as close as Apple’s ever going to get, and it brings with it all the modern conveniences, including Face ID and a nearly bezel-less 5.4-inch diagonal OLED display that puts the old model’s 4-inch display to shame. The 12 mini isn’t quite as small as the iPhone 5-it’s 23 grams heavier, 5.6 millimeters wider, and 7.7 millimeters taller. Though making a smaller phone is clearly a low priority for Apple, one advantage of turning the iPhone from a product into a product line is that there’s room to serve the edge cases. The iPhone 12 Mini (left) is only slightly larger than the first-generation iPhone SE (right).Īt last, the iPhone 12 mini is here to address this corner of the market. Eventually, Apple moved along-and left people who didn’t really want a phone bigger than the iPhone 5S behind.
IPHONE 12 PRO MAX COLORS UPGRADE
Apple’s response was to keep the iPhone 5S around for a while, then upgrade its internals as the iPhone SE. Message received: the primary iPhone model has kept getting larger, while Apple has introduced several alternative models that were even larger.īut that moment of triumph for Apple, the release of the larger iPhone 6, was a little tragedy for a lot of iPhone users-the ones who didn’t feel that when it came to phones, bigger was better. Apple finally got the message and released the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and was met with a record-breaking surge in sales.
IPHONE 12 PRO MAX COLORS ANDROID
Samsung had no such qualms, and it (along with other Android phone makers) discovered that a lot of people considered phones with bigger screens preferable to the ones with small, iPhone-sized ones. The company’s famous commitment to keeping its laptops as thin and light as possible might have made it unwilling to envision a product category where users might want a bigger, heavier object. And while it grew a little bit longer with the iPhone 5, Apple was extremely conservative when it came to iPhone design. Can these two star-crossed kids make it work in this kooky world? Let’s get small I don’t know why that bit has stuck with me for more than 30 years, but I’ve been thinking about it this fall for some reason.

But bracketing them are the two outliers, each sharing a set of features with one of the 6.1-inch phones back at home base.īack in 1989 “Late Night with David Letterman” did a comedy bit that imagined a clichéd sitcom about a mismatched couple, “Big Tex and Little Rhody.” 1 Big Tex was a Texas cowboy played by seven-foot-six NBA center Manute Bol, while Little Rhody was from Rhode Island and played by diminutive actress Charlene Tilton. The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro share a size, if not features. And over the past few years, it’s been building out that product line-leading to late 2020 and its release of four distinctly different models in three distinct size classes. But eventually the company realized that the iPhone needed to be more than a product-it needed to be a product line. I had learned to love little brother.Īpple’s one-size-fits-all approach to the iPhone worked for a very long time. My month-long inculcation into the cult of the iPhone 12 mini had done its job. I picked up a regular iPhone 12 the other day and recoiled at how large it was. IPhone 12 mini & iPhone 12 Pro Max: Enjoyable extremes
