Some new iPad mini 6 owners complaining of display flickering and discoloration, adding to earlier complaints of 'jelly scrolling'

Apple’s long-awaited iPad mini redesign is finally here and reviewers have been lavishing it with praise for the most part. Highlights include its iPad Pro-like quad-speaker setup while it is powered by a slightly slower clocked variant of the extremely powerful new A15 Bionic SoC with hexa-core CPU and 5-core GPU found in the iPhone 13 Pro models. However, it’s launch hasn’t been without teething problems.

An initial concern noted by some users emerged in the first couple of days after launch. Dubbed ‘jelly scrolling’ it is an effect that can be inherent to some LCD panels where the display refreshes slightly slower on one side of the display to the other. This can cause a jelly-like ripple effect to be noticeable when scrolling through text. Reportedly, this might be more noticeable on the iPad mini 6 because the display controller board is oriented in the portrait position -- the direction users are more likely to scroll. Apple has advised this is normal, and not a manufacturing fault.

Now some users are also reporting another purported glitch where pressing on the display about an inch down from the power button is at the top right causes the panel to ripple and distort as the video embedded shows. We have tried this with one of our own units and were only able to replicate the ‘problem’ by pressing a little more firmly than we otherwise might. From our perspective it isn’t something that would affect normal usage. After all, it is a touch screen, and does not include now discarded technology such as 3D Touch, which where one might expect a more forceful push.

Still, we will keep an eye out on any ongoing reports or comments from Apple on the subject.

Buy the new iPad mini 6 in Space Gray with Wi-Fi and 256 GB storage from Amazon for US$649.