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Apple Says 'Jelly Scrolling' on iPad Mini 6 is Normal Behavior for LCD Screens
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Not strictly true .... I've had a Mini 4 since launch, and guess what..... I've literally just noticed this in landscape, despite having used this device regularly in landscape since I got it and never seeing it.
welp...
I was so excited for an updated mini (and still might get it), but the battery life, jelly-ness, lack of pro-motion, and the price — might be enough to make we wait for another refresh. I replaced my iPad mini 2 with the 10.5" iPad Pro when it first came out and have loved the device, though I've missed the size of the mini.
There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs.
I was so excited for an updated mini (and still might get it), but the battery life, jelly-ness, lack of pro-motion, and the price — might be enough to make we wait for another refresh. I replaced my iPad mini 2 with the 10.5" iPad Pro when it first came out and have loved the device, though I've missed the size of the mini.
There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs.
When will Apple learn..
1. Apple screws up some piece of hardware
2. Customers complain
3. Apple denies it's a problem
4. Class action lawsuit
1. Apple screws up some piece of hardware
2. Customers complain
3. Apple denies it's a problem
4. Class action lawsuit
I see it in either portrait orientation. To those that do not have a mini 6, this is not a 60Hz refresh issue thats something different, this is an obvious wave shape to the data on the display as you scroll. My non technical wife simply describes it as waves that make her feel a bit sea sick looking at it. Refresh rate will cause text to see doubled or slightly blurred with fast scrolling. That we can ignore because we understand what that is. The effect being covered here is a very obvious lag in one side of the screen as you scroll the page and its seen at nearly any scroll speed. I did not see this on my mini 5 and have not seen it on other devices but maybe one of the early iPads we had. Strange thing is, the effect is not visible in landscape. If this were an LCD issue, we would see it in both orientations. I just hope there is a fix in the future.
It is an LCD issue. It wasn’t on the mini 5 because Apple prioritised portrait mode on that. For the mini 6 they have prioritised landscape mode. Combined with the lower resolution in width this means the mini 6 is practically unusable in portrait mode whereas the mini 5 was practically perfect for portrait mode.
Unusable? Thats a stretch. It works perfectly fine unless you intentionally scroll up and down fast. No one can read that fast anyway.
Jelly scrolling appears for any scrolling speed. In fact it’s a bit worse for slower scrolling because fast scrolling blurs everything anyway.
I have used the mini 5 for 2 years and had to return the mini 6 in less than a week because of how disorientating the jelly scrolling was.
The mini 5 is one of my favourite devices ever so for me the mini 6 is the most disappointing device ever.
Maybe other people can use it. But for me it was sickening.
Indeed. And here’s the issue: if Apple were going to prioritise landscape mode on the 6th Gen iPad Mini, why wasn’t this reflected by their marketing and retail departments.
- When you visit then Apple Store splash page for the Mini the first thing you see is the new Mini shown in… portrait.
- When you go to buy the product from anywhere (Amazon, Apple,etc) the device is shown in…portrait.
- When iJustine (Youtuber) interviewed Tim Cook the other day he showed her the new Mini and was holding it in… portrait .
- If you go into a retail store the new Minis are all laid out in…portrait.
It beggars belief.
It’s absolutely insane. Unless Tim Cook specifically gave permission for this decision to increase profit margins then not one but multiple people should be fired; the engineer that proposed this design, the supervisor that signed off on that design, and the QA workers that tested the design.
So no need to expect an update fixing the issue. That’s just the way it works 🤣
I know I would Be much less bothered yes.
Maybe this could be a future configuration opotion for the Mini, alongside storage options, etc. Do you want your Jelly Scroll in Portrait of Landscape? 😂
This isn't screen tearing, and is unrelated to buffers. The display itself has no buffer, and it can update the state of each pixel only sequentially, one pixel at a time. The graphics hardware sends a stream of pixel data to the display, and the display updates the state of the LCD pixels accordingly. That happens in a line-by-line scanning process, and each pixel is updated once per frame. The buffers on the GPU side ensure that during each such frame update, the display is updated with a consistent image, i.e. no tearing. But the update itself still causes a gradual state transition across the screen from one frame contents to the next, because the screen state can't flip instantly. In addition, the physical LCD pixels take some time to actually change their color in reaction to the state change (pixel response time). The color doesn't flip instantly, but "slowly" fades from the previous color to the new color.
In combination, this causes the display to look as in the photo below (when scrolling). You can see that the pixels are updated from left to right, with the "fading" effect created by the pixel response time. In motion, the human eye perceives the horizontal lines as slanted/skewed, because it merges the upper lines fading in on the right with the lower lines fading out on the left. (I'm not sure if it would be better or worse with a faster or slower response time. A faster response time may actually make it worse.)
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