Note: This transcript comes from a shooting script for the video above; it may not perfectly reflect the spoken dialogue in the video.
The iPad mini has finally gotten an update to match Apple’s latest iPad and iPhone design! iPads are usually about as awful as they come in repair terms, but that doesn’t mean we could resist taking the cute little thing apart. We’re always hoping the iPad team at Apple will start to take design notes from the iPhone team—maybe they finally have.
Blur Busters scan-out skew test
Blur Busters Understanding Display Scanout Lag
Intro, removing the display
The iPad mini has finally gotten an update to match Apple’s latest iPad and iPhone design. Its new 8.3” display is surrounded by these now-familiar flat aluminum edges coated in this very nice purple color.
iPads are typically about as awful as it gets when it comes to repair, but that doesn’t mean we can resist taking this cute little thing apart. I’m always hopeful that the iPad design team will start taking notes from the iPhone team, maybe this will be the one.
A few minutes on a heat pad softens the adhesive holding that new display on, and then a little suction helps me get a pick under and start slicing. This is the first bad part of iPad repairs—as you make your way around the display to cut the adhesive, you have to be extremely careful not to put your pick in too far, or else you can damage the display.
Once all the adhesive is cut, I can remove the Phillips screws covering the two display connectors, and hey! There’s a battery connector here too! I can’t even remember the last time we’ve seen an easily accessible battery connector on an iPad.
Jelly scrolling sidebar
A quick sidebar on that display, now that it’s free: a few people have noticed that this iPad mini has a bit of “jelly scrolling”, where one half of the screen refreshes faster than the other. This is also called “scan-out skewing.” you can test for it on Blur Busters, which we’ll link below. Jelly scrolling isn’t uncommon in LCD and OLED displays, but it’s usually less noticeable than this—I’ll explain why in a sec.
At first we actually couldn’t see it on our iPad minis and thought it was a screen lottery situation, but after some comparison and messing with camera settings, we finally got it.
Here’s the new iPad mini scrolling through some text in slow-motion. You’ll notice as the display refreshes, one side of the display sort of lags behind the other. Here’s the iPad Air that was released earlier this year: you won’t notice the same jelly in portrait orientation, but in landscape it’s definitely there.
For a super deep dive into this phenomenon and the tech behind it, you can read this blur busters post, which has some great ultra-slow-motion shots of different displays and the way they refresh.
The short version is this: the jelly you see while the iPad mini scrolls does have to do with the way the screen refreshes. Basically it can’t happen all at once, the pixels change in a line across the screen, more like a wave, or a “scan”. My hypothesis is that the direction of that scan is related to the placement of the controller board that drives the display—you can see here on the backside of our iPad displays that the mini’s board is oriented vertically, and the Air’s is horizontal.
When you scroll parallel to the direction the display is refreshing, the display still isn’t refreshing all at once, but the effect of the refresh is much less noticeable because it’s not splitting the text.
This is why you probably don’t notice this on other displays—the jelly scroll is usually masked because the display is refreshing (or scanning) parallel to whichever way the scrolling motion is taking place. So a computer monitor will refresh vertically in its landscape orientation, and a smartphone will refresh vertically in its portrait orientation.
It just so happens that this iPad mini display is refreshing horizontally when you hold it in its vertical orientation, which … is the way you typically hold an iPad to scroll. It’s also possible Apple is using a cheaper display panel, so the refresh scan is more pronounced than they expected it to be.
Just for fun, we also checked an iPad Pro, whose display controller board is also vertical like the mini’s. Its higher refresh rate screen does a much better job of hiding the jelly scroll, but you can still see it when you slow down the footage.
Removing the battery
Okay, sidebar over. back to the iPad mini. Inside, this thing is unsurprisingly similar to the iPad Air. Except for … hold up: is that stretch release adhesive under the battery? These sure look like pull tabs. Let’s give them a tug.
Well, that was a surprise. The sad part is, those tabs were slightly misleading, the battery is still firmly glued down at the top and the bottom. Some isopropyl alcohol unsticks the rest of it without too much trouble, but it can’t take away our disappointment.
It seems like the intent here was for the battery to be easily replaceable, but somewhere along the line, the design team had to add some tougher adhesive along the bottom edge of the battery, and some copper tape along the top.
Speaker investigation
Moving on, let’s crack open these new stereo speakers. The first one is easy enough to access, just some light adhesive. But unfortunately the magnet inside has its own adhesive, so … this speaker is probably done speaking.
The other speaker is sort of tied up in a bunch of other stuff up here, so I’ve got to do some, cable disconnecting, and unscrewing. It … also comes away without the magnet.
Now it’s time to investigate this mystery corner over here. This seems like it could be a third speaker, but that doesn’t seem likely.. Underneath the cover: a sorting tray!! Sweet! I’ll just keep these screws here then. And who says Apple doesn’t care about iPad repair. This is probably where the fancy new 5G hardware would go if we had sprung for the cellular model
Cameras, SoC, USB-C port
Next, let’s peek at the new cameras in this thing for all you iPad photographers out there. The front-facing camera is now a 12 megapixel ultra-wide with support for Apple’s center stage feature, and in the camera bump on the back is another 12 megapixel sensor with a standard-wide f1.8 lens.
Finally, let’s at least uncover the a15 bionic processor driving this mini tablet. Peel up this sticker and a metal shield, and sure enough! Here’s Apple’s latest and greatest system-on-chip. Well, almost the greatest. Geekbench results have revealed that while this chip does have the more powerful five-core GPU that the iPhone 13 Pro has, the CPU isn’t clocked as high. I’m guessing these mini A15s are “binned”, which just means these are the chips that didn’t quite meet the flagship iPhone standards. This A15 is still a huge step up from the old iPad mini though, and you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference if you put this next to an iPhone 13 Pro.
Oh, one more thing: the new USB-C port is modular! That’s a small victory compared to the awkward soldered cable most other iPads have.
Repairability thoughts
And that’s it for this iPad teardown! Finding adhesive pull tabs under an iPad battery really made me think that Apple had finally considered that replacement procedure, but that was a lie. The modular USB-C port is nice but without any other major repairability changes, that alone isn’t enough to move the needle in a major way. This iPad earns a 3 out of 10 on our repairability scale.
I can say that I’d definitely rather repair this thing than any iPad Pro, or even the iPad Air, but honestly that’s not saying much. Really it’s just the easy-to-disconnect battery and the battery pull tabs, and neither of those are even put to good use here.
Thanks for watching! If you were hoping to see us tackle the power button Touch ID sensor, go back and watch our iPad Air teardown, where we took that whole assembly out.
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