Comment by jjice
20 hours ago
Agreed on iPhone versions not feeling significant. I personally consider it a good thing. I'll keep my phone for as long as possible and not feel the need to upgrade.
I personally don't care if Siri is the worst LLM of the big players, as long as it can answer my basic questions and search my texts, I'm happy. I don't need "frontier intelligence" for that kind of stuff.
As for dictation, they say the new dictation is much better, requiring an iPhone 17. Unfortunately, I won't get to find out if that's true for another five or so years, but I'm hopeful for a better dictation on device, because you're right.
I update my phone now when the battery requires two full charges to 100% to last throughout the day. But there's no feature I'm looking for. My current phone is a 13 -- so I guess it lasted five years, which seems crazy long for it to be perfectly fine from a functionality perspective.
I would probably still have my iPhone 12 mini if not for what happened to its battery. Loved that form factor, but the battery went from bad to worse in just a couple of years.
Hopefully these models have a longer lifespan before the battery life forces a replacement. If they truly offer 36 hours, there's more runway before they hit the < 18 hours point at which many people need a refresh
I’ve been holding on to my 12 mini for a bit too long probably. I loved the thing before iOS 26, but sadly since then, even basic tasks cause it to overheat and just hang for several minutes until it cools off. The battery is a joke of course, but I was fine with that until the overheating. I’ve swapped it 2x over the years for a new unit, but shit software, shift web, and shit cell data coverage have made it nearly unusable.
I’ll finally, albeit reluctantly, upgrade this year. I really liked the mini form factor.
I went from a 13 Pro to 17 Pro and the battery life has been great.
I used my iPhone 8 for exactly 5 years before the battery went to hell. Been on iPhone 14 for 3 years, 9 months and see no reason to upgrade.
Same, I went from a base model iPhone 11 to a base model iPhone 16. Assuming the trend line holds up, I'm in for an iPhone 21 next!
Almost the same as what I did, 11->16 Pro, and really only because I wanted a nicer camera. 128Gb has been more than enough for what I need. Don't have a reason to upgrade, battery still gets me through 2 days without a charge, and with Kino the times I want to have nicer-than-stock video I can get it.
I'm on a 12. Paid really not very much to get the battery replaced recently, and I wished I'd done it sooner. There's at least another year left in this phone now if I want it.