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iPhone 12 mini — Technical Specifications (Apple Support)

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The iPhone 12 mini is a smartphone designed and marketed by Apple, announced on October 13, 2020, and released on November 13, 2020, as the smallest member of the four-model iPhone 12 generation. It compressed the generation's complete flagship kit — flat-edged design, Super Retina XDR OLED, A14 Bionic, 5G, Ceramic Shield, MagSafe, dual camera with Night mode — into a 5.4-inch, 135-gram body smaller than the old 4.7-inch Home-button iPhones, with zero feature cuts from the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 and a $699 price $100 below it.

Small-phone devotees had spent years asking for exactly this, and reviewers adored it — then almost nobody bought it. The mini settled around five percent of generation sales, was repeated once (as the iPhone 13 mini) on committed production plans, and the size was retired: a beloved product and a market verdict in one.

The 12 generation returned to flat aluminum sides — the iPhone 5/SE language stretched to the all-screen era — and the mini was its most concentrated expression: 131.5 × 64.2 × 7.4 mm, pocketable and one-hand-typable in a way no notch-era iPhone had been. The 5.4-inch OLED (2340 × 1080, 476 ppi — the sharpest iPhone panel) kept the full notch, squeezing the display's usable area slightly. Ceramic Shield — ceramic-crystal-infused cover glass co-developed with Corning, rated at four times better drop performance — fronted the whole generation, and the MagSafe magnet ring in the back enabled snap-on chargers and accessories at 12 W (versus 15 W on larger models, one of the mini's two real compromises).

The A14 Bionic — the first 5-nanometer chip in any phone — and full 5G (including mmWave in US models) came without any small-body detuning; benchmarks matched the Pro Max. The compromises were physical: the 2,227 mAh battery delivered the generation's shortest endurance (a real regression for heavy users, adequate for the light-use audience the size attracted), and the earpiece speaker gave up some stereo separation.

Like the whole 12 generation, the mini shipped without a charger or EarPods in the box — Apple's environmental framing of the removal drew a year of debate and, eventually, industry-wide imitation.

The dual system matched the iPhone 12 exactly: the faster f/1.6 wide lens (27% more light), the ultra-wide, Night mode extended to every camera including the front, Deep Fusion everywhere, and Dolby Vision HDR video recording — a world first the 12 generation shared. Nothing about the camera said "small model," which was precisely the pitch.

Shipped with iOS 14.1 — widgets on the home screen, the App Library — and remains on the current release train. MagSafe accessories launched alongside, the mini getting its own smaller case and charger lineup.

The mini launched three weeks behind the 12/12 Pro in the generation's staggered, pandemic-delayed rollout. Reviews were love letters: "the small phone we've begged for," full-flagship guts, the best one-handed phone in a decade — with the battery the honest caveat. The market answered differently: an estimated five to six percent of generation sales, production reportedly cut within months and reallocated to the Pro models. It fell to $599 on the 13's arrival and was discontinued on September 7, 2022.

The 12 mini answered a question the industry had argued for years — would people actually buy a no-compromise small flagship? — with a definitive, melancholy no. Its one repeat, the iPhone 13 mini, closed the experiment; the "small" slot in Apple's lineup reverted to the cheaper-not-smaller iPhone SE and its successors. Among its fans it achieved cult status instantly and holds it still, the last truly small iPhone.