Am I crazy, or could I go back to the iPhone 12 mini?

It’s throwing no shade on Apple, quite the opposite arguably, when I say that iPhones just don’t get that much better year on year anymore. They’ve reached a really high level, and so can last even the most nerdy among us, a very long time.

As regular visitors to AppleVis may have read, I have been mulling over the idea of purchasing the iPhone Air of late. Funnily enough, this took even me by surprise as all year I have been absolutely determined that I do not need, or even want, a new iPhone this year. My iPhone 15 Pro, aside from some battery degradation, is performing perfectly. Even the rumours about the iPhone Air before it was announced didn’t particularly sway me. Since the Apple event however, for whatever reason, I admit the desire has grown a little.

This summer I once again took part in beta testing the new version of iOS, iOS 26. Many people test on a secondary device, but I decided to do things the other way around. I put iOS 26 beta on my primary device, the iPhone 15 Pro, and took my old iPhone 12 mini out of the drawer, running iOS 18, to have there as an emergency backup device should I need it.

As it turns out, I didn’t need it, but I did find myself picking it up and playing around with it. It was my favourite ever iPhone, and I think it still is. I love the small and light form factor, pocketable and easy to hold and use in one hand. What perhaps surprised me though was that I did not feel a significant drop off in speed and performance. I admit I haven’t yet tried to use it as my daily driver again, so maybe I would notice more over time, but I’m convinced these phones really can be used for years if you want to. Of course many people are doing just that.

Maybe I just like having something new, even if it’s something old! So what if I did move on from my 15 Pro, except not to a shiny new 2025 model, but instead back in time to the 12 mini? How crazy is this idea? What would I actually miss?

Battery:
Ok, lets address this one head on. The 12 mini does not have a good battery. Even with a replacement battery, it would almost certainly be out-performed by my two year old 15 Pro. For many people battery is an absolutely top tier priority. I appreciate a long lasting battery of course, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. I’m generally able to top up my phone during the day if needed, and for those more active weekends etc, I can bring a power bank. So unless it turns out to be worse than I expected, battery is not a show stopper in this thought experiment.

Dynamic Island:
With the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, Apple introduced the Dynamic Island to replace the notch at the top of the screen. I acquired it with the iPhone 15 Pro. It reduced the size of the notch, and made a portion of it capable of displaying information, including live activities. I don’t deny it’s a nice little innovation.
However in practice, I have not found it to be of much benefit at all. The live activities that often fill it don’t seem to update very well for me, so I don’t trust the information. The media controls work fine, but I don’t use them, instead typically using the Lock Screen and the physical controls on my AirPods. So Dynamic Island; definitely not a show stopper.

LiDAR:
Another feature that I would lose is LiDAR, the additional censor on the back of the phone, primarily used for judging distances. This for me has been something that sounds very promising in theory, but has yielded little or no benefit for me in practice.
Many of its features which are designed for us lie in the Live Recognition and Magnifier apps, but the truth is I don’t use those apps. The tools and features I use such as Be My Eyes, Ally, Seeing AI, PiccyBot and so on don’t appear to require or really benefit from it.
I would though also lose precision finding, which is very impressive at tracking down dropped or lost AirPods and AirTags. While this isn’t something I need often, perhaps it’s something I could really miss some day, just when I need it most. So this one has some validity.

Camera:
On a related note, with the use of the aforementioned apps and tools, it is possible that I would notice a difference in camera quality. I’m genuinely unsure how important the camera improvements of the past five years have been for what I do with my phone, including OCR and AI. I suspect I could get by just fine, but am open to being convinced either way on this one.

Action button:
The Action button, introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro, replaced the mute switch on the side of the phone with a user programmable button. While we’d probably all like Apple to give us more functionality with it, such as assigning actions for double press, triple press and long press, it is nonetheless a very useful and powerful feature. I currently have mine set to launch Gemini voice chat and find it incredibly useful. So this is something I would most definitely miss if I switched back to the 12 mini.

Ports:
As a 15 Pro user, I’m essentially all in on USB C now. My AirPods Pro 2 case is the only device I have left in day to day use that is on Lightning; and even that can be charged by MagSafe and my Apple Watch charger. The iPhone 12 mini too supports MagSafe, so I would not be completely reliant on Lightning. So a return to Lightning would certainly be a real annoyance, but one I could perhaps live with, maybe.

Apple Intelligence:
I won’t get to deep into Apple Intelligence here, we all know we are yet to see it’s full promise. Apple over-promised and under-delivered when they launched it, under much public pressure, in 2024. Of course there has been machine learning in iPhones for years, and honestly, the stuff I actually benefit from likely is in the 12 mini. The Apple Intelligence branded features such as writing tools, Genmoji, image playgrounds and email summaries simply haven’t been of use to me so far. Even visual intelligence doesn’t really do anything that I can’t do, often better, with other apps, although I have on occasion used the “Ask” feature on screenshots in iOS 26.
I believe it will greatly improve in time, and I will appreciate Apple’s more privacy focused approach, but as of today, this is not yet something that influences my choice of device.

Weighing it up, I am definitely at least somewhat tempted to try going back to the 12 mini as my daily driver, but unsure if I ever will. Do you agree with my thoughts above, or are there other factors I haven’t considered? Have I underestimated the performance gap?
Whichever phone you’re using now, could you ever go backwards?