Sure the battery sucks and the phone locks up from too many things happening sometimes, but those are perfectly fine trade offs for a phone that fits into my life and isn’t my life.
When I bought my 13 mini I also bought the new iPad mini to have a larger device for content consumption and the combo is lovely
I only use it for Whatsapp, bathroom break HN and a few calls a week. Everything else I do from my PC. Also, performance is great for me, I'm not planning on running games or k8s on my mobile.
EDIT: looks like you're talking about the 13 mini, I got the 12 mini, which IIRC has similar battery life complaints. Not sure if it got worse with the latest iteration.