Pagination vs. Scrollability

Pagination is a necessary evil when you have too many items to easily show them all on one screen. Linear content flows—such as articles like this—should almost never be broken up into multiple screens. It’s better to show the full article on one long screen than to inflict the pain of additional steps on users when all they want to do is read an article, and thus stay within that one item.

Where pagination comes in handy is for listings, such as e-commerce category pages, search engine results pages (SERP), article archives, and photo galleries. Here, a user’s goal is not to peruse the full list, but rather to find a specific item and click through to that destination page.

Assuming that you can prioritize the list items, users are likely to find what they want close to the top. To focus users’ attention and improve response time, you can start by showing a fairly short list, and then offer pagination options for progressing further down the list if needed.

Users' Pagination Preferences and 'View All', Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, April 28, 2013

This one of the reasons I prefer to read ebooks in apps which offer scroll functionality. An infinite scroll is far more immersive. Pagination can be nice when reading on an E Ink screen (which would have a slower refresh rate than an LCD), but every page flip is a necessary evil and a slight interruption.