Sigh, my 12 mini had a nasty fall this summer, and was no exception to this:
(I am bigger than smaller people too… ;-)
The conditions weren’t great (dark, gray, and rainy), but I was working quickly to figure out why I couldn’t get the iPhone 16 Pro to take a 48-megapixel image, and I could capture those flowers on the deck outside my office without getting wet. 
I hope to have better conditions and more time to focus on it soon.
As you say, a very, very quick test, and I put no work into selecting items to be cleaned up. The result was much better than the original, so I was happy with the three-tap cleanup. If I had been doing it for real, I would have cropped the sides in to remove some of the extraneous artifacts and put more effort into figuring out what else I could remove.
Yes, Clean Up is only in iOS 18.1, which is what I’m running on both my old and new iPhones. It may work better, though I doubt it will change much since we’re probably just a few weeks away from release. As I said above, a little more work would likely have improved the results quite a lot, but for three taps, I was happy.
I’ve always considered Apple’s cases overpriced and boring. Apple charges $50 for clear or silicone cases, whereas the Smartish Gripmunk case was $35 with one of my favorite photos on the back. (It’s a little grainier in the photo below than it presents in real life.)
And yes, I’m aware of the conflict between my desire for something smaller and lighter and my use of a case. The simple fact is that even though I’m usually very careful, every iPhone I’ve ever owned has hit the ground several times over its lifespan. Thanks to the case, I’ve never had a breakage. It would drive me crazy to have a crack in the glass or the other kinds of damage that I see regularly on friends’ phones.
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They also know exactly what fraction of packages go missing. And they probably have that data down to the zip code level, so they know a safe neighborhood from a risky one.
If you or I lose a package, particularly something as expensive as a smartphone, it’s a big deal. So we might buy insurance or signature confirmation for a few extra bucks to be sure.
At the Apple/UPS scale, it’s just a statistic. Some percentage of packages will get destroyed, lost, or stolen. That percentage is probably small enough, even while multiplied by the wholesale cost of the iPhone, that it doesn’t make sense to spend the extra money to pay a driver to hand-deliver every package. If the loss rate is, say, 1.25%, and the cost of insurance or signature confirmation adds, say, 1.5%, then the math doesn’t work out. They self-insure, eg. they eat the loss, so long as the percentage stays small enough. And I’m sure they watch that percentage closely.
Various third-party research firms estimate that the minis made up around 3-5% of iPhone 12/13 sales, which, if I’m doing my back of the envelope math correctly, works out to several million units and somewhere around three billion US dollars of revenue. That’s not “no purchases.”
I have no doubt that Apple makes a significantly larger profit margin and much more money overall on its larger iPhone models, but I don’t think that means a smaller phone with billions of dollars of sales has no place in its lineup. This is particularly true if you consider the secondary services revenue generated by any iPhone customer. It seems more about pumping up Apple’s margins rather than delighting customers in a “tiny” multi-billion-dollar market segment.
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I had a long run of phones w/ no cases and no drops…then one spectacular oops.
:-(
Apple doesn’t agree with you. They’ve tried over multiple generations of iPhones to sell a mini model and each time have given up. That’s pretty indicative that they’re not selling well by Apple’s standards. Not having a mini has not really affected iPhone sales overall, so they’re not losing customers over it – many of the mini customers may actually have simply chosen the phone because of the cheaper cost and happily switched to the iPhone SE when given a choice. The latter phone’s status as a lower cost alternative also shows that no, Apple is not just doing maximum margin extraction in its product matrix.
(Added to this is that no other major manufacturers are really offering phones with substantially smaller screens. It seems like it’s not just Apple that doesn’t see the business case for them)
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By all reports, the Plus is selling poorly. And yet it’s still in the lineup.
So instead of just a single option for those that prefer smaller phones, we get two options for large (three if we include the SE3) and two options for huge. /smh
Mini fans need to continue to make noise. Eventually, Apple will be forced to listen to their customers (see steep discounts in China).
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When I just checked, current iPhone 16 Plus wait times (a reasonable proxy for demand) are longer than those for iPhone 16s.
Good luck.
+1 for a smaller iPhone. In fact, if they still made an iPod Touch, I’d ditch the phone entirely. A computer in my pocket? Great. A phone? That’s mostly scammers, pollsters, and robocalls.
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15 posts were split to a new topic: How to get 48-megapixel macro shots from the iPhone 16 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro has its merits, it doesn’t offer enough enhancements over the iPhone 16 to justify the extra cost for most people.
For me, it’s all about the 5x optical zoom, and I think that is also Apple’s position. iPhone cameras are great, except in two important areas: selfies in moderate light (most selfies) and optical zoom. The 5x was a huge announcement last year, but required the Max. Now, it’s available in the regular Pro.
Having just paid off my iPhone 13 Pro on AT&Ts plan, I got the 16 Pro for basically “free” again, and I’m dying to see how I can zoom in better to wildlife shots, and keep my bulky Canon on the shelf whenever possible.
For anyone who doesn’t care about the extra optical zoom, I’m not sure I see the point of going Pro.
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Another mini enjoyer here. Also not small. It’s simply that no iPhone of any vintage has ever felt as good in my hand (singular) as the iPhone 13 mini.
And it’s still working just fine for me. I skipped the v14 and v15 models, and I’m currently tracking to skip the v16 phones as well. I want a smaller phone more than I want the latest tech. At least for now…
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Regarding parcel deliveries, I find that Amazon drivers rarely knock or ring the doorbell but they take a photo of the package at my front door. The photo is sent to me promptly in a text message.
For deliveries to the front door it helps living in an ordinary suburban house but occasionally a driver (in a hurry?) will leave a package at the foot of our front steps.
Oh… and thank you for the iPhone review. My partner and I are holding out for a new model that is no larger that our current iPhones 8 - we don’t use the fancy photo features of the big new models (I have a very compact Panasonic camera with 20x optical zoom for trips).
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If you have a professional need or wish to shoot photos in RAW, that format is only available in the Pro models (15 or 16). With RAW files you can do a lot of post production adjustments (such as white balance correction, etc) that are not available in JPEG format files.
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I’ve lived in the same house in a rural subdivision since 1990. I can remember when UPS drivers would cover a specific route for years, sometimes their entire career. Later, FedEx drivers would generally stay on the same route for years. We knew their names and got to know them. They knew all the neighbors, where to stash packages, whether the dog was friendly (or not) and to ignore our “Dog On Duty” sign because she died in 2004 (we’ve only had cats since).
These days the drivers may be contract employees and in our area they do not seem to stick to the same route for very long. I had a very young UPS driver refuse to accept an official UPS form because he claimed that he had never previously seen one like it. A call to UPS confirmed that he should have accepted it and turned it in at the end of the day.
When I was working I relied on FedEx to ship photos internationally and both companies for shipping valuable equipment. I am so glad to be retired, avoiding the devaluation of my “product” to a cheap commodity and the current state of the service companies I once counted on.
Until recently I had been very happy with my 2022 iPhone SE3. But then its Bluetooth failed, cycling OFF/ON and wearing down its battery within hours. Apple tells me it cannot be repaired; since it is past its warranty, I must buy a new/refurbished phone. From what I have read online, such Bluetooth failures are not uncommon with all iPhone models.
I’ve owned iPhones since the 3S and this is the first time one has let me down. I am going to try and live without Bluetooth and wait for the SE4. There is no way I will pay the going prices for any iPhone 16 model. Like many consumer electronic products they are expensive to repair (when possible) and they have a relatively short useful life considering what they cost.
Meanwhile I am looking at some alternative phones. I’ve used cell phones since the 1980s and I can remember when I got along nicely without relying on Apple’s services.
I don’t know what you’ve read, but this is news to me. I’ve been using various iPhone models since the 4S and I’ve never heard of Bluetooth failures being commonplace.
But if you’re searching support forums, you’re going to get a skewed impression because satisfied customers don’t generally express themselves in support forums.
And I don’t think you need to. Apple still sells the 14 and SE3, both of which are perfectly good devices. Your mobile service provider may sell older models for even lower prices (I see Verizon is selling certified pre-owned 11’s and 12’s).
No reason why you shouldn’t. If you’re not so invested in the Apple ecosystem (not using many iOS apps or can run them on an iPad or Mac), then by all means look at Android phones or cheap “feature” phones. The goal is to get what meets your needs/wants, not what someone else tells you you should want.
But be aware that the Android ecosystem isn’t any cheaper. A good quality smartphone from Samsung or Google will probably cost about the same as one from Apple.
You can get less expensive phones, of course, but you need to do your homework. Depending on what you need, a cheap phone might not have the horsepower to run the apps you want to run.
No impressions of iPhone 16 Pro here so far, but I was also disappointed with the slight increase in size and weight. I used to pay extra to buy a smaller and lighter mobile phone back in the 90’s – now somehow a bigger one should cost more :-). If there is too little screen estate, then people should get an iPad instead. I think my iPhone 13 mini is a bit too big and the black bezel on the screen is too narrow and I have big hands! I could play a game of solitaire about 20% faster on the original iPhone SE (which was the best so far apart from the camera).
As to the camera – the main reason to upgrade – it was not mentioned by Adam, but apparently JPEG-XL is now supported, but you still cannot use that for photos taken despite that the quality per MB should be much better than for HEIC. I still use old JPEG on iPhone 13 as in my test they look better than the HEIC photos – they would not have looked better (I believe) if the file sizes had been the same, but since they compress the HEIC ones a bit too much that’s the end result. It could possibly have changed since I did my test, but the JPEGs are good enough and I do not have to think about changing the format when editing them (in Photoshop or Affinity Photo – I usually now edit them in both as the clarity filter is better in Affinity, but all else better in Photoshop).
Bigger size may make it easier to write correctly on the phone, but the main problem there is the auto-correct (which does not know about any Apple-specific words apparently, for example …). The phones look good (without covers), but supposing they would have wanted people to use them, like I do, without a cover then they should improve the grip on the sides – it is currently better than the rounded edges (Samsung copycat phones) they made for a while though. (Maybe sometimes Cook should think what Steve would have thought even if Steve suggested he should not … .)
Some third-party iOS apps make it possible to shoot RAW images with non-Pro models. I’m most familiar with ProCamera, which I think is also less expensive than Hallide, another comparable and popular app.
ProCamera DNG-RAW shooting is compatible with the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7, and iPhone 7 Plus as well as newer models. This should not be confused with AppleProRAW, which requires iPhone 12 and later Pro models. Apple ProRAW has additional “computational photography information” while the classic RAW format bypasses the iPhone computing system.
If you want to learn more about the pros & cons of the two formats, there are articles and YouTube videos available online.