What the iPhone 16 mini looked like with coated frames and in titanium. We take this one

Three years have passed since Apple introduced its truly compact model.

I titled my review of the iPhone 13 mini “The limits of what small smartphones can do“, because even before its release it was known that the company would curtail their production in a year and release the iPhone 14 Plus as a replacement.

Tim Cook is not satisfied with the sale, the buyer is a $700 price tag and a weak piece of wood. minika.

Of course, there is no talk of the company releasing a new model.

But iPhone 16 Pro (review) unexpectedly introduced technologies that fit perfectly with the iPhone mini. I’m talking about ultra-thin cases, a battery in a metal case, a slightly increased height and increased thickness, which is why, in principle, the small smartphone suffered greatly three years ago.

Can you imagine how beautiful it would be if all this was added there? So I figured it out.

Look how cool it turned out iPhone 16 pro mini.

Screen size 5.6 inches. The diagonal is larger than that of push-button Plus!

The iPhone 16 Pro has some of the thinnest frames in 2024, if not the thinnest. I compared them in detail with the appearance of the company’s smartphones in a separate article.

Thanks to the case this year, the flagships have increased by approximately 0.15 inch each, not two. The fact is that after the release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Apple kept within the same dimensions for the main and large models.

The most important thing in this story is that the company never makes smartphones wider. 71.5 mm for Pro and 78.1 mm for Pro Max.

Approximate specifications of iPhone 16 Pro mini
(vs. iPhone 13 mini)

● Size: 134.3 × 64.2 × 8.25 mm. (+3.8 × 0 × 0.6 mm)

● Screen diagonal: 5.59 inches. (+0.17”)

● Screen resolution: 2421 × 1116 pixels. (+81 × +36) pixels

● Battery 3 cameras: 2327 mAh. (-79 mAh, -4%)

● Battery 2 cameras: 3144 mAh. (+738 mAh, +30%)

Therefore, if the iPhone 16 Pro mini were to become larger, the size would remain at 64.2 mm.

According to my calculations, in this case we would get a smartphone length of 134.3 mm.

Considering that the presentation of the flagships of recent years is the same, the thickness of the lower part is 8.25 mm.

Accordingly, under such conditions, the result is not graceful proportions, but a small loaf, especially with rounded edges, as in the iPhone 16 Pro. But personally, I used a smartphone more than a weak wooden battery in a thin case.

Apple managed to increase the screen from 0.17 inches to 5.59 inches, which would be desirable to call the model a 5.6-inch model. If we kept the PPI, we would get a resolution of 2421×1116 pixels.

And while on a paper screen, the screen sounded just as larger than on the iPhone 8 Plus, which measures 5.5 inches, due to the different display proportions. minika In terms of area, everything took up less space, but only by 8.2%.

Capture and action buttons in the right places

To understand what the iPhone 16 Pro mini could look like inside, we took photographs of a disassembled iPhone 16 Pro and compared the details. Additionally based on the previous generation.

I’m not an engineer, so I don’t claim any authenticity from my words at all.

If the logic of tracking the device and maintaining the physical dimensions of the components, Apple had no choice but to move the lock and capture button closer to the lower limit due to the large camera block. For this purpose, the “Actions” and “Action” buttons would be added.

This change was made for the iPhone 16 Pro mini in a portable iPhone, where new controls have been added over the past two years, it would be really convenient to use. Not like now.

Battery is still small

The camera unit with an impractical 5x telezoom took up almost a third of the smartphone.

At the top of the firmware there is also Face ID, a speaker and several chips. To move the whole thing in width, we had to sacrifice the mini-speaker traditional for models.

In the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the batteries are L-shaped, but in the mini, the entire board with A18 would rest against the bottom block of modules, where USB-C, the second speaker and the Taptic Engine are located. The last two also had to be reduced to fit into the stock.

As a result, we are left with a tiny space under the battery. But we have two sleeping circlesso that the battery has more than 2 hours of operation.

The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are 0.6mm thicker than the iPhone 13 mini (8.25mm vs. 7.65mm). This is not enough, but still the company compresses the components and installs a larger battery.

Also, the iPhone 16 Pro uses a metal battery case for the first time for Apple smartphones. The company makes a solution to reduce the number of errors only in the Apple Watch. I have an assumption that this is necessary not only for better dispersion of the tempo, but also helps to make the capacity higher.

As a result, my multi-level calculations led to the fact that the iPhone 16 Pro mini with a camera had a battery with a capacity of 2327 mAh.

It seems that for 2024 the figure is simply ridiculous. But follow your hands.

But even under such circumstances, the camera would not have basic autonomy.

I’ll get a small ace. Not everyone remembers exactly, but before the release of the iPhone 14, I was already trying out how a miniature firmware could be built. Then all the cards were against it, because Apple was not going to do anything from the iPhone 16 generation.

The huge block of three cameras looked ridiculous, the thick frames did not help the size of the screen, and the battery turned out to be very tiny.

This is what the minik grid would look like:

• iPhone SE 3: 2018 mAh, 15 hours
• iPhone 12 mini: 2227 mAh, 15 hours of video
• iPhone 13 mini: 2406 mAh, 17 hours of video
• iPhone 14 Pro mini: 2041 mAh, 14.5 hours of video
• iPhone 16 Pro mini: 2327 mAh, 16.5 hours of video.

Thanks to the higher height and new battery technology, the even more energy efficient A18 processor is 30% compared to the A15, we would definitely get more battery life.

Apple could confidently call the same 17 hours of recording as in the iPhone 13 mini. And that would be 2 hours more than the iPhone SE 3, which is selling right now.

But the battery with two cameras turned out to be unexpectedly powerful

Just for fun, I took the contents of the base iPhone 16 and laid it out on the body of our iPhone 16 Pro mini. It worked Fine.

The height of the space has not increased, but This year, for the first time since the original iPhone, Apple limited the main motherboard at the top of the device..

If you do the same with the iPhone mini, a lot of space will be freed up on the right. This is exactly what it lacks for top-end autonomy.

With this layout The iPhone 16 Pro mini’s dual-camera battery could go up to 3,144 mAh, which is larger than the iPhone 13 Pro’s 3,095 mAh and only 146 mAh smaller than the iPhone 15 Pro’s.

For a smartphone with such a small bracelet, it was a real gift. The operating time up to 23 hours was literally the same as last year’s smartphone.

It would be a great line

Even with one outlet, the iPhone 16 Pro mini was an excellent model. This would make room for an even larger battery, perhaps even a gigantic one for such a model.

Probably, then it was possible to remove the titanium, add Pro, lower the price and release a truly popular iPhone 16 mini.

If you’re interested in what this would look like, let’s experiment with the idea next year.

After all, the thought is no longer strange. After all, next year 2025 we will see two new iPhones with one socket, the budget iPhone SE 4th generation and the expensive iPhone 17 Air/Slim.

Disappointed with the latest Apple cameras, I would seriously consider buying such a mini. Still, this is not the first time I’ve thought about this.

📸 All photos in the article: