After Upgrading To This Year’s iPhone, Should I Keep My iPhone Mini?

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I am going to upgrade to the new iPhone that Apple will release in less than an hour. I don't know which iPhone yet as the actual details (weight, battery life, what we can actually do with the new iPhone Duo/Ultra) will help me make that final determination. And I am still on the fence about what to do with my iPhone 13 mini. It has been my loyal mobile companion for nearly 4 years. That is the longest I have ever held onto a phone. It really says about about the device.

So as you can see, giving it up is not that easy, least of all, it is still chugging along and should get a few more iOS updates from Apple. Sentiments aside, it is only a tool. Just like the AI induced social and industrial changes that are happen right now, the AI models are still just tools.

We continuously get updated models because the ones that come after is always more capable and "smarter". For the mini, the fact that is still works and does a lot of what I need is the reason to keep it around.

Still, I don't want to be one of those folks who carry around two devices. One of the reasons I am upgrading is because of the new cameras on the modern iPhones. And this time, I am likely to go big. I will be spending more time over the next few years traveling. I like to take better photos and spend time learning to take better phones. Plus, when I got the mini, I didn't have a cute little dog in our family. Nearly 90% of all the photos and videos I take are of her. She's our forever puppy and constantly gets mistaken for one by adoring strangers who mistaken her petite size, puppy like energy, and soft coat for being a little girl. Our little girl.

And let's be honest about Apple's intentions. The iPhone mini was given a shot. The iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 13 mini. Despite decent sales and a loyal fan base, it was not enough for Apple to justify the cost of keeping it around. I don't doubt it was an easy decision to make to discontinue it and it also means that we will never see another small form factor iPhone ever again. At least not one that will be considered a replacement for the mini. Perhaps one day Apple will release a foldable iPhone - the iPhone Compact that can be opened up into a regular iPhone.

One thing that might make me keep the mini around could be this: Apple and app developers will begin abandoning support for it in the coming years. Other mini owners and I will likely not feel the effect for years but it will come. But with vibe coding, I can extend the life of the iPhone mini even more. At that point, it will be whether the development tools support coding apps for older iOS devices. I've code my own writing app, pedometer, journaling/private social app, and a text browser. I even dabbled in creating an AI app though it is not very useful given the model limitation. All of this has given me hope that not only will I personally be able to support older devices, I will be able to craft my mobile experience in ways that better suit me.

We are less than an hour away from Apple's iPhone event. I will decide if I will keep the mini around after that. If I do, I think older iPhones still have a lot to offer.

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