• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Has anyone replaced an iPod battery?

B

bigdaddy

Vice Admiral
Admiral
I have a second gen 16GB iPod Touch and the battery can't hold it's power anymore. I know there are kits for $20ish to change it but it looks complicated. So I looked up what a battery replacement cost from Apple...

$79 plus $6.95 for shipping!!!!!!

I paid $85 for the iPod itself in July!

So I'm wondering if anyone here has done it and has any advise besides "Apple suxz!!!"

Frankly I'm thinknig about selling the damn thing for $120 and let it be someones' else problem. :lol:
 
Your best option is to probably, yeah, sell it or donate it to someone place that "recycles" old electronics or throw it away -at a place that properly recycles/disposes of electronic devices.

My understanding is it's not like most electronics where if even you did manage to get it open the battery is still hard-wired onto the PCB.

So, yeah, I'm also going to play the "Apple Sucks!" card in not given their customers a chance to replace the battery in the device they buy, instead, forcing you to either go an expensive route of either getting the thing replaced/battery replaced by having it sent off, go through a complex and jenky process of cracking the thing open and replacing the battery or throwing something away and forcing you to buy a new one.

It'd be like if Ford sold you a car that could get 100,000 miles on one tank of gas but once you run out of gas you have to either buy a new car or go through a headache to refill it.

WHY NOT GIVE PEOPLE TO POWER TO REPLACE THE BATTERY?!

It's pretty much a fact of life that batteries fail or lose the ability to hold a charge. To make it so people have to jump through hoops just to do the most basic of things all battery-powered objects should be able to do is just dumb.
 
How long does the battery hold its power? You could always fill it up and trade it in at Best Buy or any of those places that take in trades for credit.
 
Be VERY VERY careful about buying cheap li-poly batteries.

There are a LOT of news stories of devices exploding from li-poly fires - cheap batteries come from dubious factories and are often cells that have been rejected for quality reasons.

(I fly electric R/C airplanes and we deal with this sort of stuff all the time...)
 
Arrqh said:
The replacement is possible, but very difficult. There are instructions here if you want to take a crack at it but it requires soldering: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-iPod-Touch-2nd-Generation-Battery-Replacement/1131/1
Click to expand...

Yeah I looked that up and went "SOLDERING?!?!", that's insane. I bought it off a friend for $85 in July, why spend another $86 to fix it?

It holds a charge... kind of... I played some games for 15 minutes and it sucks up three times as much time as it should. Last night it went from 100% to 80% to 30% to 75% to 50% to 65% while I was playing a game. It normally jumps a little depending on what you are doing, but it's just nutty.

I'd love a new one, but I had this one for 5 months, and the thing is only 2 years old. I was hoping the battery would last at least another year. I knew it would be an issue to take the thing out, but never knew I had to solder it out.
 
bigdaddy said:
Arrqh said:
The replacement is possible, but very difficult. There are instructions here if you want to take a crack at it but it requires soldering: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-iPod-Touch-2nd-Generation-Battery-Replacement/1131/1
Click to expand...

Yeah I looked that up and went "SOLDERING?!?!", that's insane. I bought it off a friend for $85 in July, why spend another $86 to fix it?

It holds a charge... kind of... I played some games for 15 minutes and it sucks up three times as much time as it should. Last night it went from 100% to 80% to 30% to 75% to 50% to 65% while I was playing a game. It normally jumps a little depending on what you are doing, but it's just nutty.

I'd love a new one, but I had this one for 5 months, and the thing is only 2 years old. I was hoping the battery would last at least another year. I knew it would be an issue to take the thing out, but never knew I had to solder it out.
Click to expand...

Not to mention prying open the case, being cautious not to tear the cable and so many other issues.

Rather than, you know, Apple simply giving the person the ability to replace the battery. :rolleyes:
 
Wassail Drunk said:
Rather than, you know, Apple simply giving the person the ability to replace the battery. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

To be fair every MP3 player and smart phone also have this issue. What about tablet computers? Are they like laptops and the batteries can come out, or more like the iPod?

It's just stupid that you can't just take the back off and take the battery out.
 
Wassail Drunk said:
It'd be like if Ford sold you a car that could get 100,000 miles on one tank of gas but once you run out of gas you have to either buy a new car or go through a headache to refill it.
Click to expand...

Hell, the fuel savings alone would be worth it!
 
bigdaddy said:
Wassail Drunk said:
Rather than, you know, Apple simply giving the person the ability to replace the battery. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

To be fair every MP3 player and smart phone also have this issue. What about tablet computers? Are they like laptops and the batteries can come out, or more like the iPod?

It's just stupid that you can't just take the back off and take the battery out.
Click to expand...
Yea definitely. I figure I'll have to get a new battery soon for mine... and at the end of the day, it's not really worth it :(.

It's more worth getting a new one, then going through what they have you go through -- money wise and stuff.

@ bigdaddy: Yea it makes no sense that there isn't a way to do that on tablet computers as well.
 
No way would I mess around with something like this. I'd probably end up setting the iPod on fire. :eek:

I only use my iPod in my car, and I have it always hooked up to a charger, so I really don't care what happens to the iPod's battery. It's so old anyway.
 
Wassail Drunk said:
Having it always hooked up to the charger is a sure-fire way to kill the battery.
Click to expand...

Ohhhh........



I'll probably just buy a third party charger and then just go into cafes and such to recharge it. I need wifi anyways to use it more than music, and the music thing would still last 12-20 hours I think before charging.
 
Mr. Laser Beam said:
Wassail Drunk said:
Having it always hooked up to the charger is a sure-fire way to kill the battery.
Click to expand...

How so?
Click to expand...

It's an oddity with some batteries. They tend to develop a "memory" on where their chrage is and before too long you can't charge them up anymore. The best way to operate any battery-powered device is to use it until the battery is almost dead and then charging it up (using it at the same time.) Otherwise the battery will get "used to" always being charged fom, say, 90% so before too long that 10% becomes your 100%.

It's just an oddity some batteries have which may not include the types used in iPods. But, in general, the best thing to do with any battery-powered device is to use it until it says the battery needs charged and then plug it in and continue using it. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
 
^ The memory effect only applies to nickel cadmium batteries, which iPods don't use.

iPods use Lithium-ion batteries.
 
Ah, didn't know that. Yeah, I think lithium batteries are the ones that have the opposite effect! Running them all the way down and then recharging them effects the battery's life.
 
I am thinking that these batteries do have a memory in them. I have a 1st gen iPod Touch that is still going strong. This is ONLY because I have treated it as any other device with a memory-based battery, letting it completely exhaust its charge before plugging it back in. The fact that my 1G has outlasted the OPs 2G proves this to be true. Treat ALL personal-sized battery-driven devices as if they have a memory and they will last. Does not matter what they are.

The other thing you may want to consider is make sure your Wi-fi network searching is off once you are done using it. Even if you turn off your device, the network searching & pinging are still active and drain power quickly when not in use. Cell phones in a dead zone have the same problem. They expend great amounts of energy trying to search for an active cell.

I believe the only kinds that truly do not have a memory are the larger-sized UPS and auto batteries.
 
No, lithium ion batteries do not have "memory" in the sense that you mean. They do have circuitry that keeps track of the health of the battery which if you keep it at a high level of charge all the time can go out of sync with the battery, but you can easily recalibrate that by doing a full charge cycle.

There are a lot of factors that impact lithium ion battery life. Temperature, frequency of cycles, storage level, etc. There's a long article on it here, but in general you don't want to do full discharges on lithium ions because this actually harms the battery.
 
None of this matters anymore being the iPod is "shutting down" now... and has been for the last 10 hours. I shut it off last night at 9:45 eastern, it's 8ish now and it never shut off!

I think my only hope is in several days hopefully the battery will die and it will shut off.

Took 20 tries, but I got the thing to reboot, the top button seemed stuck.

I think I just have a weird iPod.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top