"Wobbly" page when scrolling in safari with iPad 3

i've noticed the same thing. I went to the Apple Store this afternoon and tried two iPad 3 demo models and the exact problem showed up on both devices as I am experiencing on mine. I showed one of the Apple sales people and, at first, he seemed to think I was delusional. It only took him a moinute or two, however, to see the problem once I pointed it out to him. Don't waste your time and patience exchanging. It won't make a difference.

It's not a glitch, there are 3.1 million pixels to update and a gpu running to maintain 10 hours battery life. You can't have everything without sacrificing something. Quite normal...

I just noticed that I can see my iPhone 4 doing the same thing. I never noticed it until I saw it on the new iPad.

I started playing PC games back in the '90's. Actually, I wrote some stupid games on the Tandy 64 in the '80's, but let's not go there. On PC games, you fight this battle of vertical synchonization vs. frame rates. You either have high frame rates or good vertical sync, but not both. I think the high pixel count and prominence of straight edges allows us to see an effect that resembles Vsync both off and on. It's a mix. You either have stuttering frames or tearing frames. To be perfectly honest, I think we're seeing a perfect blending of the two. I'll check iPads at the Apple store, but I bet it's normal.

We need to be happy with this cutting edge technology and move on. It's hardware and software limitations, not hardware defects.

Hello everyone,

I too am having wobbly web pages when scrolling in portrait mode. At first I thought it might be a screen refresh problem that was confined to one side of the screen (right side for me). So I conducted some tests. The wobble is there in my book mark list as well which is set on the left side of the screen, but confined to the right side of the view pane, so that test alone blew my theory out of the water. Next test was to flip the tablet 180 degrees and again test for wobble in portrait mode, the wobble was still there on the web page as well as the bookmark bar, and the lag was again confined to the right side of the screen on the web and the bookmarks bar. The final two tests was checking for wobble in landscape mode 90 degrees left/right turn from portrait, the wobble was gone on the web page and bookmark list. BTW the wobble is also present in the Facebook app as well. So a render display bug only in portrait mode?

PS. After the tests I feel better knowing that my display is probably not broken and that it is a software bug. However, I am not a software engineer either, so take my statment as an opnion/hunch

iPad Gen 3 White 32GB WiFi only

I noticed this and was bothered. Figured it might be that the iPad3 struggling with updating the graphics, but was concerned that it might have been an issue with my iPad3 display.

Anyway, went back to my iPad1 to double check, and it does the same.

I think something might have changed in iOS 5.1 because I have never noticed it on my original iPad before. The scrolling does seem more jittery than previously.

Hey sbojeevets,

good spot. In computers where the screen's refresh rate of the GPU is higher than the refresh rate of the display and causes misalignment of the display, the situation is known as "tearing" and this is a hardware limitation probably.

In computers, this issue can probably be alleviated with tweaks on the GPU settings (so it goes to say its firmware & driver) to aligns the frequency the GPU communicates with the screen to prevent misalignment which results in tearing as it is not uncommon that GPUs may be faster than the displays. Otherwise known as vertical sync etc.

I'm not sure if Apple has thought of this point but chances are that this can be fixed with firmware side tweaks. Apple probably won't let us toggle this if they were to implement such a tweak like vsync, they'll put it on as a default but I think this would be a good bonus. The downsides to vsync would be "control lag". It may/may not happen in the case where the device is an iPad.

But it will SERIOUSLY be too much of being an opportunist if Apple were to say this wasn't a possible fix and tell its customers , "buy our new iPad 4. We read you."

Quick update guys...

I managed to check out on of the iPads on display at my local reseller. I got the same results there so it's 'case closed' I guess.

I noticed it on an iPad at the Apple Store. I was scrolling through photos horizontally in landscape mode when I noticed the vertical edges of the photos became slightly tilted. It is as if the top of the photo could not catch up with the bottom. In Portrait mode, when swiping through app pages, icons seemed to stretch in when moving in one direction, and compress in the other.

I did not try another iPad and therefore cannot say if it is a common issue. iPad 2 does not have this issue.

My sister could see it (barely) after I told her. My niece couldn't. Therfore It is possible that some people are more sensitive to this phenomenon than others, just like some people can see the "rainbow effect" on DLP projectors whereas others cannot.

I'll check it out on another ipad when I have a chance to go to the Apple Store again.

Duncan, don't wait go to another store before you wait too long to return/exchange.

Well, there we have it. It's normal.

We either had a.) page tearing, b.) frame stuttering, or c.) what we got. I'm happy with what we got. I don't see it in games and I don't read while scrolling, so who cares.

Somewhere there are Apple engineers who had to balance it all: frame rates versus vsync. I think they did a good job of dealing with what they were given. Now, if we could just get the iOS programmers up to the same level.

Again, it's not a bug. It's a compromise between graphics tearing and frame lag. You will hear people say their's doesn't do it because, for whatever reason, they don't notice it. Get over it and enjoy your iPad or go get an iPad 2 with cruddy resolution.

I noticed the same issue, though only when scrolling in portrait mode. I don't see the distortion during landscape scrolling. My question would be whether all iPads have this glitch, or only some?

It's called a "vertical synchronization" anomaly. Too many pixels and not enough GPU power. Get used to it.