The 7th generation iPad mini includes the A17 Pro chip for Apple Intelligence. Credit: Apple
A new teardown of the 7th generation iPad mini reveals few changes, and despite evidence that the effect is minimal, there are no obvious physical changes to reduce jelly scrolling. There wasn’t.
In the 2024 iPad mini, despite no obvious changes to the display driver board, the issue has not been completely eliminated, but the impact has been reduced. However, a teardown by iFixit.com revealed some of Apple’s changes to the new model, including an interesting change to the Apple logo seen on the back of the device.
To enable the new iPad mini to support Apple Intelligence, in addition to upgrading the chip to A17 Pro and the minimum RAM to 8GB, Apple has also upgraded the base storage to 128GB. Thanks to the new chip, the 2024 iPad mini now supports both the Apple Pencil and the new Apple Pencil Pro.
Additionally, the Wi-Fi module has been upgraded to support Wi-Fi 6E, and the USB-C port can now transfer data at speeds of up to 10 Gbps. However, apart from these changes, iFixit reports that the only notable change in the new iPad mini is the reduction of the jelly scrolling effect.
Simply put, this is a slight “tearing” effect that is most clearly seen when scrolling through text. This is caused by a slight mismatch between the refresh rates on the left and right halves of the screen.
federico vitic mac story believes the issue has been “solved” as a newly optimized display controller reduces the delay between left and right screen updates. iFixit used high-speed cameras to show that the effects were dramatically reduced, but not completely eliminated.
This problem could have been further alleviated if Apple had changed the display to a 120Hz model, but Apple still uses 60Hz IPS displays in new models. After disassembling it, we found that almost nothing else had changed from the 2021 model in terms of parts.
One or two small surprises
One of the new discoveries during the teardown was that the new USB-C port is easier to replace than previous versions. This is good news from a repairability standpoint, as USB-C ports have seen a lot of wear and tear over the years.
A CT scan performed before disassembling the iPad mini revealed that the silver Apple logo on the back had been changed, and a teardown revealed the logo was no longer etched into the metal like on previous models. did.
This means the Apple logo is now a separate piece glued in place on the back plate. This allows for easy removal even after removing the main components of the device.
iFixit has announced a preliminary score of 3 out of 10 for the 2024 iPad mini. This matches the score the company gave its previous model.
