Long touted as close to a refresh, the iPad mini 7 last week became the third Apple-branded tablet to arrive in 2024.

But while the upgraded storage, boost to Wi-Fi 6E, and jump to the (slightly downgraded) A17 Pro chipset are welcome, there is one improvement that Apple has not explicitly mentioned as a possible part of the hardware.

In the latest edition of the Six Colors podcast, co-host Jason Snell revealed that, as previously predicted, the iPad mini 7 finally addresses the “jelly scroll” issue that plagued owners of the previous model when the tablet was held vertically ...

In a segment first highlighted by MacRumors, Snell revealed his understanding that an unspecified change was made to the iPad mini's display hardware, the “implication” being that the change was to fix jelly scrolling. '“My guess is it's different,” he said. 'And maybe it's getting better. And maybe it's gone.”

For those who don't know, jelly scrolling is when one half of the screen updates at a visibly different speed than the other, creating a slightly jarring wobble effect when in motion, for example, scrolling a web page.

This effect is difficult to explain, but this video by Vincent Teoh shows what happens in ultra-slow motion and explains why some people find scrolling on the iPad mini 6 uncomfortable.

One hypothesis as to why this phenomenon is particularly noticeable on the iPad mini 6 is revealed in iFixIt's disassembly video. The controller board responsible for the display is mounted vertically, as opposed to horizontally in the previous generation, and the way the screen updates (left to right instead of top to bottom) appears to have changed.

In other words, when browsing the web in landscape mode, where both scrolling and refreshing occur simultaneously, you will not notice jerry-scrolling, but holding the iPad mini when reading web content is not the case for most people.

We won't know how effectively this issue has been addressed until the tablet reaches early adopters next week, but we'd be surprised if Apple didn't try to minimize this problem in some way, even if it was just by moving the controller board. Apple points out that jerry-scrolling is a normal behavior for LCD displays, but that did not prevent talk of a class action lawsuit specifically targeting the iPad mini 6.

Nevertheless, as Teoh explains, one way for Apple to make jelly scrolling less of an issue would be to upgrade the mini to a ProMotion 120Hz display. as shown in the iFixIt video, jelly scrolling is present on the iPad Pro with the control board mounted vertically, but the refresh rate is so high that it is only visible in slow video.

A full review of the iPad mini 7 will be posted soon, but in the meantime, here are five reasons why our computing writer Tony Polanco is looking forward to the iPad mini 7's arrival.