I love the concept! I think TinyPod is an outcry over the sizes of the smartphones today. The smallest most recent iPhone you could buy was iPhone 13 mini and it was discontinued. Don't know about other brands, but from what I am seeing nothing fits the pocket anymore. There must but a niche for those who don't read or watch movies on their hand-held devices, and if the apps are well designed a smaller screen is just fine.
Not even the pocket, all modern flagship phones are so large that I can't use them well with one hand. I'll stick with the mini till the day it does and just hope there's a better something out there by that time.
I'm hoping that Apple releases a new mini on a 3 year cadence. Maybe there wasn't enough demand to continue the line every year, but they'll bring it back occasionally?
I would enjoy this as well, but they need to be transparent about the plans, so people who want small phones can get them. On several occasions I bought something new (that I hated), because I thought the line I liked was dead. Then a year later they release something new to fill the gap.
I bought an iPhone 13 mini the day the iPhone 15 was released and the 13 mini was discounted, with plans to keep it until it was pried from my cold dead hands. Now, less than a year later, I’m not sure how that’s going to go. While I love the size, and have hated every other iPhone since the 5/5S/SE, the lack of RAM on this thing is a real problem. The browser can’t handle some pages, things constantly reload causing me to lose stuff. It’s not great. Some developers have also seemed to stop caring about making sure things work well on the smaller screen. I sent 1Password a bug report, they tested and confirmed it was an issue and said they do still support the Mini, yet the issue remains a year later, last I noticed.
I’ve also wanted the Pro camera setup for years, but it’s only on larger phones, so I didn’t get it. There is this misguided idea that people want small phones because they’re cheaper. I’d pay a premium for a small Pro phone. If they need to make it thicker to fit everything in and give it the same size battery, I’m good with that… it would eliminate the camera bump, which would be great.
I buy my phones through work, so my next upgrade opportunity isn’t for another 14 months. When the time comes, I’m not sure if I’ll be as excited to hold onto the mini. I want to make my point, but also want a usable phone. Not to mention probably wanting some of those Apple Intelligence features. I’m troubled by the whole situation.
I just posted the same thing. I think there are more of us than Apple thinks, at least I like to believe that. I think Steve Jobs was in that camp as well.
When the 12 mini was released I bought it and Apple sent me a survey. It seemed like have the questions were asking if I bought the mini because it was cheaper. It seemed like that was the assumption they were going with. I answered over and over again that I didn’t care about price, and if there were comments I wrote that I was price insensitive and cared about the size, not the price.
I get steep discounts on phone hardware through work, but if they released an iPhone 16 mini Pro tomorrow, I’d pay full price out of pocket, no questions asked.
I'm in the same boat. Want a small phone with premium features. My hope is that the next generation of iphone SE is at least on par with the 13 mini that I currently have. Otherwise, not sure what I'll do when my mini dies since the current SE is a pretty big step down from the 13 mini.
> if the apps are well designed a smaller screen is just fine.
This was the problem I ran into. They're not.
I held onto the iPhone SE for quite a while. Everything became progressively more cramped as the years went by. Some app UI controls were cut off. All sorts of web stuff was laid out funny.
While everything did _work_, I get too annoyed at knowing that I'm having a sub-par UX every time I see it.
I have a pro max and even with this size some websites are cramped and badly designed. I can’t imagine with a mini version… such a shame because it’s really nice to have a small phone at all time
My hope was that the mini would be a success and they'd eventually had a Pro Mini line, but sadly the mini form-factor hasn't sold well. I would buy a Pro Mini in a heartbeat.
