zlacker

I think the "mini" name hurt it too. People thought it would be small, when the screen was in fact bigger than the screen on the 6/7/8 iPhones. It was a similar form factor without the forehead and chin.

The mini could have been simply, iPhone. The marketing would have been that they managed to add an extra .7" of screen, while reducing the overall size and weight. That's a great pitch. Who doesn't want a bigger screen in something that more easily fits in their pocket? Instead they called in a "mini", people thought it would be tiny and hard to use, so they didn't buy it.

The iPhone 12 mini screen was only .1" smaller than the screen on the iPhone 8 Plus... the giant option from just a few years earlier.

The mini was a marketing and brand strategy failure, plain and simple. It wasn't a small phone.