It appears the cause of the OnePlus 5’s soon-to-be-infamous ‘jelly scrolling’ has been discovered and it’s a doozy.
According to the XDA Developers, the OP5’s jelly scrolling, an effect whereby scrolling through the screen will result in text bunching together and stretching out (the video below, shared by The Verge‘s Dan Seifert, shows the phenomenon in action), is likely caused by the fact that the smartphone’s display is mounted upside-down.
It’s reportedly possible to replicate the effect on some — but not all — smartphones by rotating the device 180 degrees and scrolling up and down. It’s currently unclear why a flipped display causes such a telltale visual effect, but XDA speculates it may have something to do with what area of the screen is updated first.
The XDA Developers community was able to confirm the OnePlus 5’s display is inverted by examining the phone’s kernel source code. XDA forum member SultanXDA found a line of code that tells the OnePlus 5’s display controller to compensate for the display physical orientation by 180 degrees. A recent teardown of both the OP5 confirmed that its display is mounted upside-down.
XDA staff writer Mishaal Rahman speculates OnePlus may have oriented the display in this way due to inside space considerations. The OnePlus 5’s dual-camera array, which takes up more physical space than a single camera, may have forced OnePlus to orient the screen and its controller upside-down to accommodate all the other components inside of the OnePlus 5’s casing.
In a carefully worded statement issued to The Verge, OnePlus said the effect is “natural,” suggesting it’s unlikely the issue will be fixed by a software update. However, in a recent post, Reddit user titoo7 said he was told by OnePlus support that the company’s software team is working on a fix. In any case, if you’re on the fence with the OnePlus 5, it might be best to take a wait and see approach to see how this issue shakes out.
Source: XDA Developers
