Well, it was almost a year, since I started using the iPhone 12 mini that Nick gave me when he bought his 15 Pro Max. (He said 16th is the same, and it’s not reasonable to buy it for more.)
I was charging my phone 35…65% all the time, I even have my special automations for that. Sometimes I needed some relaxed recharges during the day, it was super effortless. When I see the phone is at 35%, I put it on charge for like 15 to 30 minutes (a slow charge), and it’s closer to 50% or even more. And it’s usable for almost the entire day. I don’t use my iPhone that heavily. It’s mostly messenger, or me reading some web, or me working with my to-do system in Obsidian (so, reading or writing text). All that was perfectly good on my 1st Gen SE, yet it’s screen isn’t that good. Performance-wise, I could use an iPhone X from 2017 (mine one from 2020), which is now-obsolete. And probably I’d like to downgrade, but since my iPhone is perfectly good, except the battery, I’m not going to.
This phone felt like it is from the future. The infinite battery changes a lot. My battery was infinite, and when Nick was giving the phone to me, he was smirking that charging it four times a day is my problem now. I replied in all seriousness that I’m not going to, and that was the truth. I was chrging that phone twice a day with 15 minutes sessions of slow-charge, literally. The battery was infinite, and each use was a couple of percents, I couldn’t do 60% → 50% unless I was using it very heavily. Not to say 65% → 35% (I have notifications for both). That travel would take half a day for me.
Today? Yeah, I can take it with 65% and put it back on charge with 35% within one session, which in my case isn’t very long usually. Like, half an hour tops?
That’s iOS 26 with all its fanciness. I understand I should pay for this. But the thing is, I don’t even like all these glassy things. They are nice and fancy and all, but the previous version wasn’t bad either! It was more stylish than this. But nobody asked me. I’m not some luddite in that regard, and I’m very open to many things. And I’m open to this glassy super-distraction (from the interface alone!) too, even when I clearly see it’s too much for me, it just spams and DDOSes my attention muscle. Which isn’t that strong.
I have an impression that my Intel MacBook Pro 13" (Late 2014) with battery at 60% health is much more stable with its battery. It works very confidently for at least 3 hours of heavy usage. Last time I was in the office a couple of weeks back, I didn’t take my charger (expecting to leave the office after two hours tops), and it survived 3 hours easily. I didn’t use my laptop that heavily for maybe half a year, yet it survived this.
Now, I’m like Nick. I charge my phone 3 to 4 times a day, and that charge is 20% → 80% now. Sometimes even 20% → 100% now (I can simply forget to remove the charger). Now these two Belkin dock stations Nick gave me are of a use, finally! They were just a fancy paperweights on my tables, at farm and at home. Now, I actually use them to re-charge my phone!
Cool, ain’t?
Same goes with Solomia. She’s a super light phone user, and her phone surely survived a day or two. Now, I’m paying attention, I see her phone is constantly closer to 20%, so it triggers me to go put it on charge, when I see it. She’s having iPhone 11, which is regular size. So, that’s not some tiny-phone-tiny-battery-plebs issue, it’s the system. The system.
Now, I feel this teleportation back in time. Not even into my SE1 years, not even my 5S ones, but straight into my first iPhone 4S. Oh, remember that iOS 6 → iOS 7 update? That was it, that was all the same. This time, I expect I won’t be given this privilege to update to iOS 9 equivalent. I expect our phones won’t be supported next year, and when there are at least some performance patches, we won’t get it. As how would they nudge us into buying new iPhones? These are perfect for us already.
Only I started value this little size of mine much more. I started using it as my organiser with the collection of my (mostly to-do) notes. What a blessing to have this super-computer in my pocket. Sorry thing, it was perfect before the update, and now it’s just a fancy toy that’s not too reliable, when I need it.
So, for the future, it’s obviously only the biggest possible size, since its battery is also bigger. Or… maybe Apple will fix this, at some point.