iPad mini 7 teardown confirms no display hardware changes for ‘jelly scrolling’ fix

3 weeks ago 5

iFixit shared their teardown for the new iPad mini yesterday, highlighting the fact that Apple did not rotate the display driver in order to fix the “jelly scrolling” problem – which many expected them to do. Instead, the fix lies somewhere else.

When reviewers got their hands on the new iPad mini, many of them noted that jelly scrolling was at least reduced. Some people claimed it disappeared entirely, while others argued it was just an improvement over the mini 6.

For context, jelly scrolling is an issue where half of the display refreshes slower than the other half, resulting in a wobbling effect.

We’d previously heard that Apple’s jelly scrolling fix might’ve not necessarily been a fix with the actual display hardware, but rather a fix with the display controller. Federico Viticci from MacStories reported the following:

I’m happy to report that, in the new iPad mini, the jelly scrolling issue has been fixed without the need to change the underlying display technology of the device. The new iPad mini has an optimized display controller that ensures the entire panel will refresh at the same rate and speed. For this reason, even though it’s the same display across two generations with the same refresh rate, color gamut, pixel density, and brightness, the new iPad mini does not have one side of the screen that refreshes more quickly than the other.

All in all, the iFixit teardown further confirms the fact that Apple didn’t change much about the hardware. However, they did reveal one new detail: the Apple logo is now removable.