Last month marked three years since I bought my iPhone 13 Mini. Unfortunately, it was starting to show its age a little – the battery was not holding charge very well, and the charger port was being awkward, which exacerbated the charging issue.
I quite like the size of the iPhone 13 Mini, and I’m disappointed that Apple has stopped making iPhones this small. As I write this, the smallest iPhone is the iPhone 17E, which is 15mm taller and 7mm wider, as well as weighing 30 grams more. And compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, my phone is 2/3rds of the weight, 30mm shorter and 12mm narrower. I resisted moving from the iPhone 5/5S form factor to the iPhone 6/7/8 partly because I felt that was too big – the iPhone 13 Mini has turned out to be an almost perfect size.
So, I have a good reason for sticking with my current iPhone. Plus, sorting out the issues with my phone would prove to be much cheaper than buying a new one.
New iPhone battery
I had previously had the battery on my iPhone 8 replaced, which helped it last for five years. So, doing the same with my current phone made sense. I was able to get a local phone repair shop to do the job in about half an hour, so that I didn’t have to be without my phone for too long. The ‘new’ battery isn’t actually brand new; it’s been recovered from another iPhone 13 Mini that had been disassembled. As such, it didn’t have its full 100% battery capacity as new from the factory. Instead, it offered 94%, which is better than the 80% that my current battery offered. 80% doesn’t sound too bad, but I was having to charge it multiple times per day – especially when we were in London. At 94%, it can do some whole days without needing a top-up charge.
As the new battery is a genuine Apple battery, the phone doesn’t complain about it. Indeed, the engineer who fitted the new battery walked me through how newer iPhones are able to authenticate genuine Apple batteries fitted outside of the factory. Once the new battery is fitted, it reboots into a cut-down version of iOS where it authenticates over Wi-Fi, and then reboots again when done.
Cleaning the charger port
The phone repair shop also cleaned out the charger port for me. I’ve tried blasting it with a can of compressed air, which helped, but it could still be awkward with some cables. Instead, the shop used tweezers to pull out stray dust that was insulating the contacts in the charger port. It now charges much better.
I wouldn’t go far as to say that my iPhone is like new again. Arguably it now acts like a one year old phone, rather than a three year old phone, but that’s a big improvement. It would be great to get this one to five years old, like its predecessor, before needing replacement. By then, maybe Apple will have started offering a smaller form factor iPhone again?
As for the cost? For the new battery, installation and charger port cleaning, I paid £60 at the local repair shop. Had I opted for a third-party, non-genuine battery, it would have been cheaper. By contrast, Apple charges £85, and I would have also had to factor in getting to the nearest Apple Store in Leeds. £60 for what I hope will be another two years of use isn’t bad.
