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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

I have luckily had the opposite experience. I've always had the biggest phone I could get (Pro Max and all the rest) but decided to try the 13 Mini after hearing so many good things. Given how fussy I usually am, it's been amazing. The pros outweigh any cons for me, but it seems the Mini is going the way of the dodo in future anyway and the SE really is a step too far down for me.

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Just hold on to your current phone. I upgraded to the 13 mini from the 7 Plus expecting it to be faster. It isn’t. I’m still glad I upgraded because the mini is smaller than the 7 Plus while giving up only a little bit of screen size, and I can use it without a case because it’s not shaped like a bar of soap.

But this showed me that phone performance is no longer a reason to upgrade, so I’ll probably hold on to this one even longer than I kept the 7 Plus.

What do you do on your phone that the 13 mini isn't faster than the 7 Plus? I've had both of these phones — the 13 is my daily driver, and I have the 7 plugged into a TV as a media hub. While it isn't unbearably slow, it's noticeably slower than the 13 for pretty much everything.

I know that objectively speaking the chip in the 13 is leaps and bounds faster. But in my daily use I don’t see it. Safari is no faster. Maps is no faster. Some apps like Sonos still have startup time.

Probably the apps I use just aren’t CPU bound, or they need other optimizations to make them faster. Which probably makes me like most people. My wife is still happily using an iPhone 8 and she will probably replace it only when it completely goes out. Since phones are so durable now—the home button doesn’t even wear out—that might take years more.

Interesting! Makes me want to go do a speed test to see where the biggest differences are One app that comes to mind is Camera, which is super fast to load on the newer phones. When taking photos of babies/toddlers, load time is important! But you're right that some apps probably have similar load times across devices because the weakest link is a web connection (Google Nest, looking at you...).

I’m not sure how you could say the 13 isn’t faster than the 7. That seems like a perception/expectations issue.

> the SE really is a step too far down for me

Down? What does the mini have that the SE doesn’t?

Magsafe, Face Id, nearly full-screen display, and a better camera array (I think?).

Also uwb for Air tags.

>Face Id

I switched from an iphone 7 to a 13 mini and I dearly miss touch ID. It worked a lot better than face id IMO. When the new SE was announced just months after I got the mini I was pretty bummed.

FaceID has been a revelation for me. TouchID was rather touchy... If my finger was a bit damp it didn't read. If my skin was too dry, it wouldn't read. FaceID hasn't failed me yet.

I've also experienced some flakiness with Touch ID, bit Face ID has been even worse. It frequently fails when a strand of loose hair partially covers my face.

For me, and this is irritating, magsafe. All my other devices have it and the peripherals are better with it.

I agonized over this dumb thing but am terribly happy with my mini, in ways I haven’t been since the original SE.

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