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Tech · Apple · 2021

Apple iPhone 13 mini

The last small iPhone with a full flagship camera, and the battery is the price you pay for that.

Used iPhones on eBay: six worth buying, oldest last — #4

Overall

8.0

out of 10

Axis scores

Strongest on Design (8.6), weakest on Durability (7.2), a 1.4-point spread. The 8.0 overall is the plain average of all 5 Tech axes, with no weighting.

Apple iPhone 13 mini — axis scores out of 10Horizontal bar chart of editorial scores out of 10 across 5 axes. Bars run from a shared zero baseline; longer is better. Apple iPhone 13 mini: Performance 7.8, Value 8.4, Durability 7.2, Ease of use 7.8, Design 8.6.PerformanceApple iPhone 13 mini — Performance 7.8 out of 107.8ValueApple iPhone 13 mini — Value 8.4 out of 108.4DurabilityApple iPhone 13 mini — Durability 7.2 out of 107.2Ease of useApple iPhone 13 mini — Ease of use 7.8 out of 107.8DesignApple iPhone 13 mini — Design 8.6 out of 108.6Editorial score out of 10 — higher is better
  • Performance — How well it does the core job
  • Value — What the same money buys elsewhere
  • Durability — Failure and fade reports past the one-year mark
  • Ease of use — Setup, daily operation, cleaning, maintenance
  • Design — Build quality and how it sits in a room

Specs

Display
5.4-inch Super Retina XDR (OLED)
Chip
A15 Bionic (4-core GPU)
Main camera
12MP
Port
Lightning
Battery
Up to 17 hrs video playback
Storage
128GB, 256GB, 512GB
Water resistance
IP68

As published by the manufacturer. We didn't measure these ourselves.

Is it for you

Buy it if

  • One-handed use matters more to you than anything else on the spec sheet
  • You carry a phone in a front pocket and hate the bulge
  • You want the iPhone 13's cameras in a smaller body

Skip it if

  • You're a heavy user; a worn mini battery won't last a full day
  • You read a lot on your phone and the small screen strains your eyes

Apple stopped making small phones after this one, and eBay is now where small-phone loyalists shop. That keeps demand steady and prices firmer than a four-year-old phone would normally hold.

Battery health decides whether a 13 mini is a good buy. The small cell had little headroom even when new, and owner reports converge on the same story: once health drops into the low 80s, a heavy day ends before dinner. Treat a listing under 85 percent as a phone that needs a new battery, and budget for it.

Everything else is the full iPhone 13 at a smaller size: same chip, same main and ultrawide cameras, same OLED quality. The keyboard is cramped for big thumbs, which owners say takes about a week to adjust to and never fully stops being a compromise.

Last updated . The scoring method is on how we rank.