I understand that Apple did not make enough money to make it worth their while to continue the iphone mini line. However, it does seem like there is a profitable business for someone there given how beloved it was/is.
I only traded out my iphone 12 mini just recently for an iphone 16 pro (likely the last apple product I will ever buy but thats another story) and aside from the camera it is basically the same. Just heavier, awkward to hold and slightly worse designed.
No major player wants a smaller screen because it has downstream impacts on the pipeline of addictive material and ad pixels they can stuff into ocular nerves.
I ended up switching from a 13 mini (I had the 12 mini as well) to a 16 Pro. I was having a lot of battery life issues, and kept running into apps that clearly didn’t fully test with the smaller screen. I also really missed having a telephoto lens.
My phone usage went up; my laptop/desktop usage went down. I don’t like that. Compared to a normal computer, a phone is still worse in almost every way, other than mobility. It’s just now tolerable enough to put up with more of the time. I’m writing this on the phone, it would have been easier on a keyboard and mouse.
You, like me, are not representatives of a market phone manufacturers are interested in. Utilitarian and minimal use only sells one phone every few years.
They are catering for the overwhelming market that spends upwards of 5 hours screen time per day, watches movies and TVs, plays games, and generally spends as much time as possible on them, with as much payment and ad revenue as that comes with on top of the original device sale.
I always personally liked the idea of computers being fixed, or semi-fixed (like a laptop), as a place to work or study, and then leave once that is done. The replacement of computers and laptops by tablets and phones is a wider cultural shift from computers being tools and productive technology to entertainment and consumerist technology, in my opinion.