Update to iPad Mini “Jelly Scrolling”
Samuel Axon, writing at Ars Technica: iPad mini teardown sheds new light on “jelly scrolling” controversy
A new teardown of Apple’s latest iPad mini by iFixit found a clue that may explain the “jelly scrolling” effect that some of the tablet’s users have complained about.
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After we wrote about it, Apple commented on the story to us saying that the effect is expected. From our coverage:
In response to our inquiry, Apple has told us that the “jelly scroll” issue on the 6th-generation iPad mini is normal behavior for LCD screens. Because these screens do refresh line by line, there is a tiny delay between when the lines at the top of the screen and lines at the bottom are refreshed. This can cause uneven scrolling issues like the ones observed on the iPad.
When tearing the mini down, iFixit found that the controller board that drives the tablet’s display is oriented vertically. By contrast, the iPad Air’s is oriented horizontally. iFixit suggests that the jelly scrolling effect occurs when the tablet’s orientation doesn’t match the placement of the controller board, because the line-by-line refresh also happens relative to that board’s orientation.
Sure enough, slow-motion footage of the iPad mini shows the jelly scrolling in portrait mode (a vertical orientation) but not in landscape (a horizontal one). And the iPad Air also exhibits jelly scrolling in the same test; it just does so in the horizontal orientation instead of the portrait one.
Now that “jelly scrolling” thing has some clarification I plan to visit my local Apple Store to check out the Mini. I’m interested in getting the base model.
