Comment by seec

I think you are right because people who bought minis got them for a specific reason and now there is just nothing in the market that can pretend to replace it.

My own mini has not been upgraded to latest iOS but I know it is in short probation before it gets really unusuable. It's pretty bad with swapping already because Apple was so stingy with the godamn RAM (it's insane how much modern apps use for not much more utility).

The problem is that I have really no clue what to buy, even if I were to go Android. I just can't find a phone that I think merit the tradeoffs of form factor, I just don't have much use for all the modern gimmicks. A better battery life would be nice but it's not even a big deal in my case.

The problem is basically the same as for cars. People are buying larger phones with many useless features for social status reasons or aspirational/fashion statement.

The smartphone as a tool was a finished product a long time ago but now they keep adding all kind of extra stuff that even manage to kill the initial feature of conveniently fitting in an average pocket.

I would compare that to Victorinox Swiss knifes: there are a handfull or reasonably sized models with all the tools you are likely to need for small tasks and there are monstrosities that have 100+ tools that are so large, even using them as a knife is inconvenient. If people would buy Victorinox Swiss knifes like they buy smartphones, most would get the largely useless bigger ones.

Most people are not very rational and make purchasing decision not on their needs but because of trends, marketing, social status, peer pressure, etc... When a market becomes very large and target the whole population at once, products tends to get pretty bad because they are not focused on specific use case and try to please everyone, really pleasing no one in the end. Since there is not much other choices than to follow, people deal with it and that's that.