iPad Mini 6 jelly scrolling is not a problem, Apple claims
Jelly on the slate
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Apple launched the new iPad Mini earlier this month. However, with units now landing in customer’s hands and with reviews finally landing, we’re seeing a common theme throughout many people’s first impressions of the new tablet. Some folks might never notice it, others will be consistently infuriated by it. Though not especially well-known, those who are able to perceive higher refresh rates might notice that the iPad Mini has an issue with something named ‘Jelly Scrolling’, which Apple has claimed is not an issue and ‘normal’, despite this not being an issue for any other liquid retina display in other iPad models that are currently being sold.
Usually, when you scroll on a screen, you’re expecting all of the content to move up and down at the same time in accordance with the speed your finger swiped it at. ‘Jelly Scrolling’ occurs when not all parts of the screen are consistently refreshing at the same rate, which can result in a shimmering effect or can be perceived as a slight amount of lag when you’ve scrolled. It can be particularly noticeable when using a black background with white text, or with complex, dense sets of pixels such as an animated gif or image. To check out what ‘Jelly Scrolling’ looks like for yourself, you can check out a tweet from Dieter Bohn (The Verge), who captured a slow-motion video where you’re clearly able to see the screen not consistently refreshing.
9to5Mac reports that this issue can be seen as pretty widespread in the new iPad mini, and is even visible on demo units at Apple Stores worldwide. However, in a statement made to Ars Technica, Apple stated that the ‘Jelly Scrolling’ issue is normal behavior for LCD screens. Later, Ars Technica continued to claim that the same issue was not present in other 60hz Liquid Retina displays in other Apple products such as the iPad Air, or the latest iPad. So, this issue seems specific to the iPad Mini, but why is only this model and size of screen seemingly affected?
Either way, it looks like you’re out of luck if you’ve just bought a new iPad mini and were hoping for a fix from Apple themselves on the hardware or software side. We’d recommend that if you get super-annoyed by this issue, to maybe skip on ordering an iPad Mini.
