Newer iPad mini has a subtle scrolling issue

Apple’s latest iPad mini was released to the public on Friday and over the weekend users started complaining about a subtle scrolling issue when using the tablet in portrait mode (MacRumors has a good review article). The tablet appears to refresh the left and right halves of its screen at slightly different rates, creating a subtle but noticeable jelly scroll effect. Dieter Bohn of The Verge captured slow motion video this demonstrates the problem.

The issue is subtle enough that we didn’t notice it when testing the mini for our review, but our review unit does indeed appear to be suffering from the same issue. This is most noticeable when scrolling a web page or document relatively slowly up and down – the left side of the screen appears to follow the right side by only enough so that paragraphs of text appear rubbery and wobbly to a keen eye.

In our testing, the issue seemed to affect the screen in landscape mode, where the left and right halves of the screen become the top and bottom halves of the screen. But horizontal scrolling is much less common in most applications than vertical scrolling, which makes the effect less obvious. Some users reported that they couldn’t notice the issue in landscape mode at all.

It is not clear if this issue is caused by the hardware of the iPad mini or if it is an issue that Apple can fix with a software update. We have asked the company for comment and will update this post if we receive a response.