iPhone 13 mini
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iPhone 13 mini
Your new superpower.
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| RED | Starlight | Midnight | Blue | Pink | Green |
| iPhone 13 mini — Technical Specifications (Apple Support) | |||||
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The iPhone 13 mini is a smartphone designed and marketed by Apple, announced on September 14, 2021, and released on September 24, 2021 — the second and final small model in the modern lineup, succeeding the iPhone 12 mini. It addressed the first mini's one real flaw head-on: a redesigned interior and the A15's efficiency stretched battery life by a claimed hour and a half, moving the mini from "charge by dinner" to genuinely all-day for its light-usage audience.
Otherwise it tracked the iPhone 13 exactly — the 20% smaller notch, the diagonal dual-camera with the iPhone 12 Pro Max's big sensor and sensor-shift stabilization, Cinematic mode video, 128 GB base storage — at the same $699 the 12 mini launched at, in the generation's warmer palette.
Committed production plans, not sales, had secured the mini's second year; the market's answer hadn't changed, and when the iPhone 14 generation arrived the small slot became a big one — the mini's replacement was the 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Plus. The 13 mini stayed on as a discounted option until September 2023, the last small iPhone.
1 Design✎
Identical footprint to the 12 mini — 131.5 × 64.2 mm, now 7.65 mm and 141 g — with the generation's two visible changes: the TrueDepth notch narrowed 20%, and the two rear lenses rearranged diagonally to fit the larger stabilized sensor. Five launch colors (Pink, Blue, Midnight, Starlight, RED) plus the spring Green; Ceramic Shield; IP68 at six meters; MagSafe.
2 Hardware✎
| Developer | Apple |
|---|---|
| Generation | 15th |
| Announced | September 14, 2021 |
| Released | September 24, 2021 |
| Discontinued | September 12, 2023 |
| Predecessor | iPhone 12 mini |
| Related | iPhone 13 · iPhone 13 Pro · iPhone 13 Pro Max |
| Successor | — (size class retired; iPhone 14 Plus took the slot) |
| Display | 5.4-inch Super Retina XDR OLED 2340 × 1080 (476 ppi) HDR · True Tone · Ceramic Shield |
| Chip | Apple A15 Bionic (2 + 4 cores · 4-core GPU · 16-core Neural Engine) |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| Storage | 128 GB · 256 GB · 512 GB |
| Rear cameras | 12 MP wide, f/1.6, sensor-shift OIS + 12 MP ultra-wide, f/2.4 Cinematic mode · Photographic Styles |
| Front camera | 12 MP TrueDepth |
| Battery | 2,438 mAh · MagSafe 12 W · Qi |
| Connectivity | 5G · Wi-Fi 6 · Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Colors | (PRODUCT)RED · Starlight · Midnight · Blue · Pink (+ Green from March 2022) |
| Launch price | $699 (128 GB) · $799 (256 GB) · $999 (512 GB) |
| OS | iOS 15.0 ~ current |
The A15 Bionic and a battery grown to 2,438 mAh (plus a display drawing less at typical brightness) delivered the endurance fix — reviewers measured ninety minutes to two hours over the 12 mini, converting most of the first mini's skeptics. Storage doubled to a 128 GB base across the generation.
3 Camera✎
The mini inherited flagship-grade hardware: the 1.7µ big-pixel main sensor and sensor-shift stabilization that had been the iPhone 12 Pro Max's headline exclusive twelve months earlier. Cinematic mode — rack-focus video with editable focus after the fact — and Photographic Styles (persistent, tone-preserving looks) arrived with the generation. For its size class the 13 mini's camera had, and has, no peer.
4 Software✎
Shipped with iOS 15 (Focus modes, Live Text, SharePlay); current release train since.
5 Release and reception✎
Reviews called it the small phone perfected — the battery objection answered, the camera above its weight, the price unchanged — and repeated the commercial prediction that had haunted the 12 mini. Correctly: the mini share of the generation stayed in single digits, and no 14 mini followed. Price-cut to $599, it continued alongside the 14 generation until September 12, 2023, and its discontinuation ended the small iPhone outright.
6 Legacy✎
The 13 mini is the small phone's finished argument — everything its audience asked for, delivered twice, declined by the market twice. It closed a form-factor lineage running back to the original iPhone, and it remains the reference point every "why don't they make small phones?" thread cites. The compact slot's spiritual successor became price, not size: the iPhone SE then, the iPhone 17e now.