I’m not a ‘complainer’ - I’m fairly happy with my iPhone 14 Pro - but the appeal is clearly the size. Having a big screen Mac is not a reasonable analogy for a phone as you’re not carrying it with you everywhere. I’ve adapted to the 14 but I’ve always felt the sweet spot for me was the iPhone 5 size.
I have friends who were adamant they wanted the 13 mini and have not upgraded since. TO each their own, there is no right or wrong. As for Touch Id vs Face ID, I would go back to Touch ID in a heartbeat - I’m not a fan of Face ID at all.
As I’m not in the market for a phone there’ll all moot points, but I suspect there’s a still a market for smaller phones - it may just be a small market (pun intended).
I think I may just give my current phone a good clean, new screen protector, new case and ‘unbox’ it again for the novelty of it feeling new again. Within a few months any new phone I buy would feel just like my current one but I can enjoy the novelty of feeling like new :)
Oh, one more thing. I’m pretty sure every iPhone I’ve owned has been black. Silly as it sounds, I don’t think I’d get a 17 Pro as there’s no black, and my 21yo son said the same thing.