Is the iPhone 13 mini Still Worth It in 2026? One Month on iOS 27

After a month

Quick update after a month. Still great. I'm still on iOS 27 RC because I can still use the banking app, and the idle drain is okay. It doesn't really drain overnight anymore. It did for the first few days, then it stopped. I will probably just stay on this iOS version forever lol.

I've been using it lightly, with only around 20 minutes of screen-on time per day, and it drains around 30% per day. Mostly I just do quick checks on Facebook, X, and Reddit while I'm outside, and check notifications from 2 messaging apps, a banking app, 2 Gmail accounts, and ChatGPT. And yes, there have been times when I only needed to charge it every 3 days. But I have 2 phones, so don't take my experience as a benchmark.

Still, with a full battery, I did take it out as my only phone, went on a picnic, and came back to charge it at night. For a heavy app like ChatGPT, I have started to notice the slowdown. But it's not that slow. I mean, it's still doable for me since I'm mostly just checking it here and there.

Speed: fast while browsing socials.

Temperature: cool while browsing socials, hot when recording 4K videos. And I don't play games on this.

I believe temperature is the main thing you need to care about with your phone, besides, like, not putting it in a situation where it's flooded with notifications. Just don't let it stay burning hot for too long. Try not to stay under direct sunlight, or don't put it in your pants pocket while you're out in the sun.

The most important thing is how good it feels to hold such a small phone. And when you put it in your pants pocket, it's so light and the size is just perfect. And the camera is too good for this price.

I still have my big Android phone to browse the internet and play games on, so the iPhone 13 mini is still perfect for me. But I do understand that if the iPhone 13 mini is your only phone, then you probably want the battery health to be above 85% for it to be practical. If it's lower than that, I'd probably replace the battery.

I've read in other threads that people get around 5 hours of screen-on time on the iPhone 13 mini, and I can believe that. For comparison, my big Android phone with a 5,000 mAh battery that's 3 years old (it doesn't show battery health %) gets around 7.5 hours of SOT with heavy use.

When I first got it

I’d been searching around and reading a lot of positive comments about iOS 27 beta, so I finally got an iPhone 13 mini today with a new battery.

At first, on iOS 26, it was seriously burning hot. I was just checking things out and setting up my iCloud, and it was already warm. Then while updating to iOS 27, it got burning hot lol.

But yeah, I already knew what I wanted to do. I rushed straight to iOS 27 beta and then, boom. Once the update was done, it was smooth and cool.

For such a small device, and at this price, with these cameras and this kind of speed, it’s really fast for everything I do day to day. (I still do a lot of browsing, everything except gaming.)

I’m really happy I took this bet. Tbh this feels like the perfect time to save old phones.