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APPLE
Finally, a Pocket-Sized iPhone With Face ID
The iPhone 12 mini is the phone I’ve been waiting for.
The Great, but Too Big iPhone
In November 2017, after three frustrating years of using Touch ID on an iPhone 6, I decided to upgrade to the new iPhone X and give Face ID a try. With Touch ID, I would place my finger squarely on the sensor and sometimes the phone would unlock, and sometimes it wouldn’t. I could never tell what caused the failures. With Face ID, unlock failures only occur when my face is obscured or I look away from the phone. I just effortlessly unlocked my phone ten times in a row using Face ID, something that was impossible with my iPhone 6’s Touch ID sensor.
The iPhone X’s improved biometric authentication made it a worthwhile upgrade; its 5.8" edge-to-edge display and its dual-lens camera made it a fantastic upgrade. The one downside was the phone’s significantly larger size resulted in it being only marginally pocketable [“That is so inconvenient”¹].
A Glimmer of Hope
I’ve known about the potential for a 2020 iPhone with a 5.4" display since reading about it in a Ming-Chi Kuo research report in MacRumors last summer. It seemed like it might be the perfect size iPhone for me, slotted between the…
