not that there's any reason you should trust my opinion, but I would doubt it. the mini is much nicer than the SE in pretty much every way. the bezels on the SE belong in 2017. the 12 mini has a much larger screen and a smaller chassis. if I were willing to spend $750 on a phone, there's no way I would cross-shop the two.
I had the mini for a week and returned it for an SE2. The screen is slightly smaller on the SE2 but in a good way because your thumbs can reach better. It also lacks the cutout at the top. I have average size hands but my thumb can really roam around everywhere on the SE2/iPhone 8 screen size. I just wish the SE2 had OLED and a bigger battery. That would have made it a tank of a phone. I really have to agree again with Steve Job's old reasoning for small phones. It really changes how you interact with the phone. I'm happy to be able to pull up the control center from the bottom again rather than from the top right corner. Source: I'm an iPhone X convert.
Besides Touch ID being more useful than Face ID during a pandemic, I'm also not a fan of the PWM flicker across iPhone 12 models. Depending on how paranoid you are about your eyes, this could be a deal-breaker.
I also wouldn't buy any 1st version of a product. It's getting beta tested with the public, whereas the SE is tried and proven for many years and does the job (for me at least), for $300 less to boot. Although, I'll definitely be interested in a perfected mini in the future.
