September is already looking to be an exciting month in mobile with IFA, Samsung, Sony and Apple all set to bring us all the latest gadgets and gizmos that we've been yearning for for months. It all starts off on September 4th at Samsung's Unpacked event in New York City, where we hope to see the unveiling of the Galaxy Note III and the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. We are also expecting to see Sony's rumored Xperia Z1 (codenamed "Honami") announced across the pond in Berlin that very same day, with the main selling feature of the device being that it packs an above-average 20.7-megapixel camera. As it turns out, news comes to us today in the form of a sketchy looking leak, which many are interpreting to be the "Honami Mini", which wouldn't be too far-fetched given that "Mini" devices are becoming more popular with each release.

The most notable thing about this leaked image (aside from the fact that you really don't have much to work off of - why is it that all leak photos are terrible? Is it just a requirement that all leak sources have terrible cameras or shaky hands?) is that it's being compared to one of the considerably smaller smartphones on the market already, the BlackBerry Q10 - and it's smaller. Naturally you'd think that devices that include "Mini" in their name would be a lot smaller than its larger counterpart anyway, but sometimes that's not always the case, like with the HTC One Mini. In this case, if this device truly is a Honami Mini, it really does hold up to its name.

But just being a small device doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good device, or even that it reflects much of its larger variant. The Galaxy S4 Mini, for example, looked like the original Galaxy S4 on the outside, but an entirely different story played out for it on the inside. As with any smaller device, you can expect it to be watered down because a smaller phone equals a smaller amount of space for all the things that make the original great. However, I do feel that other devices have been able to live up to their original's name better, such as the HTC One Mini. The HTC One Mini was able to keep most of the iconic things about the device: the UltraPixel camera, BlinkFeed, Zoe and BoomSound, but the Galaxy S4 had to shave off a lot of those extra Smart features that people wanted in the device which kind of rendered it unworthy of the name, to me.

The rumored specs of Honami somewhat follow in the same footsteps as the HTC One: it is rumored to have 720p display (which isn't bad considering what looks to be a significantly smaller display), the same Snapdragon 800 chipset as its big brother, and perhaps the most impressive (keep in mind, rumored) feature is that it keeps the 20.7-megapixel camera on the back. The device is said to also feature a 2,400 mAh battery, which is even bigger than the HTC One's battery. A bigger battery and a smaller screen? Well, depending on how well optimized the software is, it sounds like we could get some pretty kick-booty battery life out of this Mini, and the only real drawback in rumors so far is the display (if it's really that important to you, that is).

I'm hoping that the rumored specs for the Honami Mini turns out to be more than just a rumor, because if it is then I think Sony might have actually created one of the best Mini adaptions on the market. Not only that, but by supposedly releasing it on the same day as the original Honami, Sony is escaping that strange fad where some manufacturers like to release one variant after another with a month or more in between releases. It really ruffles my feathers when a new variant of a device comes out a month or two after the original did, and ends up being better (or supposedly better, as it turns out) than the original. Maybe I wanted that device instead! But Sony will hopefully take the road less traveled this time and release both at the same time. That would be awesome in itself. I guess you could say that's killing two birds with one stone, although I was hoping to find a happier idiom for a potentially happy situation, but this one will have to do.

I don't know about you guys, but for once I'm actually excited to see a "Mini" variant of a device come out. Would you be interested in the rumored "Honami Mini", or would you rather Sony just release one variant and one variant alone? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Images via GSMArena, Android Guys