Hi, it's future editing Dave here doing a voiceover because, well, Dave's dumbass. uh. Cameraman forgot to plug the microphone in. so I got like halfway through this video before realizing it wasn't plugged in yet.

Don't Anyway, so Voice Over. This is my amazon, uh, Kindle paperwhite. it's I don't know, three, four, five years old or something. It's quite old now and I've been having issues with it for like months, where, uh, the touchscreen would intermittently work and not work.

and like, of course, without the touchscreen, you can't use it. It's got no other controls on it, so it's really annoying and no amount of resetting. Sort of fixed anything. So I finally got Jack of this thing.

It's now just completely not working. and the other thing is is that it's not charging either. It's um, yeah. so is the battery dead in it? I don't know, it's not doing anything, so it looks like it might be a combination of faults or faults could be actually be related.

We don't know until we play around with it. So let's take it apart. And yeah, you can actually uh, like press and hold the reset button to like reset the things like you hold it for 10 or like a minute and it's supposed to like completely reset the cpu and stuff like that. So I've tried that.

None of that seems to work so nothing left. Let's take it apart. I really had, uh, quite a bit of trouble actually getting my little, uh, plastic spudger. You don't want to use a metal spudger because then if it slips, you can actually, You know, put a big mark across the screen.

I had actually a lot of trouble trying to get this under and pry it out, but I found that if you do it from the power connector end, there's a bit more give under there which allowed me to get it under. I finally got it though. So the front is just, uh, stuck on with some head adhesive and then you've got like a dozen screws to get this thing out. that's actually a lot of um screws to like.

that adds a lot of production cost. Uh, to the unit. Somebody's actually got to screw all these screws in like it's an alloy frame. don't know whether or not it's a magnesium alloy or not.

and then the whole thing just start. lifts out easily and you can see that there's a little um Rfid tag on the back because it doesn't actually, uh, connect uh to anything. It's not like a Wi-fi or an antenna. it's that is the Rfid tracker that they use when it goes through the conveyor belts on the production line and stuff.

Um, they have to identify these units and this is, uh, this is the way they do it at various uh production assembly steps. I'm not sure the exact you know thing. it's all closely guarded. Amazon's secret of course, but yeah, that just allows you to individually identify each unit with a remote sensor.

So here's the completed assembly. very nice. Everything's under a metal uh can of course and the battery. Um, there it is.

Lithium polymer job uh, five and a quarter watt hours and it's easily replaceable, so you know, Hats off. They've made these uh things you know, simple to easy to replace. I mean, it wasn't hard to get the front panel off and if you can just unscrew that, then any uh Joe average can replace the battery in their Kindle by the looks of it. And yeah, the main Pcb.

everything's under the metal cans and unfortunately, Art can't get those off. They seem to be, uh, soldered down so we're not gonna see much at all. And there's our uh, e-paper uh, display driver and looks like we've got some uh charge pump caps there, but nothing else doing. There's nothing wrong with that.

and here is where we might potentially have an issue. This is our touchscreen uh connector there and our touchscreen controller. I believe it's like a capacitive uh, touchscreen. And yeah, so there could be like some connection issue in there, perhaps.

But I don't know until um, that we solved the problem of. well, I'm going to solve the battery charging problem first. I'm not going to jump into the uh touchscreen, uh controller. It's more likely to be a battery.

When you're like you're trying to solve or troubleshoot these things, you want to do the easier stuff, work. you don't want to go down the rabbit hole of the touchscreen controller and all the dicky little connections in there and things like that. Um, yeah, solve the charging issue first and you might find that the touchscreen controller issue was related to the battery. I mean, the battery is easy to solve and we can just take it out.

so the battery just lifts out here and then it's just got some spring contacts onto a Pc board in there and that's going to have some battery protection as well. But have a look at the contacts though. There's actually four pins and it's not like a temperature, uh sensing pin for like, overcharge and stuff like that. No, they're Sda and Scl, so that's an I Squared C interface that no doubt has an annoying um, like Id chip in it and the software.

They've protected these things, so if you put in an aftermarket battery that doesn't have the correct Id in it hasn't spoofed the Id, then it's going to pop up with an error message you know, probably saying you know invalid battery or something you know, not authorized by Amazon by your Amazon overlords and uh, yes, please, buy a genuine one. and uh, bugger off. But the good thing is though, that that Id chip should be on the protection pcb in there, so we should just be able to. if there's anything wrong with the battery.

we should just be able to replace the uh cell inside there, but keep the Pcb so it has the genuine chip in there so it'll think it's a genuine battery. but we've just replaced the cell and that's how you can get around this. so let's see if this has any juice left in it. 2.86 volts.

Well, no, that's not good enough. That's usually below. uh, the operating voltage of, um, like a device with a lithium polymer lithium ion battery like this. Uh, but it is above the like.

a typical uh, dead cell, uh, protection voltage of like, you know, 2.4 2.5 volts. Something like that to actually protect the cell from over discharge. so it's somewhere in there, but it's not good enough to operate it clearly. All right.

So let's do a uh charge test on this thing to see if it actually charges or not. Uh, so we're gonna. It's uh, normal, 3.7 volts. but uh, these, uh, charge up to 4.2 volts.

So that's that's the maximum compliant voltage you want to set and the current you want to set. Uh, typically like for something like this, you don't want to charge it at 1c. so it's 1400 milliamp hours. You don't want to charge it at 1.4 amps, which you would be 1c so we're going to go in order of magnitude less than that to be safe.

140 milliamps? I don't know what the actual charge rate is uh for the Kindle, but you know this would be nice and safe. So let's give it a go. So how do we make contact with this? Well, uh, using the awesome Pcbi? uh, system. I love these things.

I've done a video on the second channel and on the mailbag actually reviewing this and they're just, uh, pressure point contacts which are just under their own weight. Make contact very handy and got the magnetic base and everything. Fantastic. All right.

So let's switch it on and it's instantly gone up to 3.8 3.9 volts. Wow, that's a significant jump up. I wouldn't uh, have expected that. perhaps.

But anyway. Um, yeah, it's it's doing. There's 140 milliamps going into it, but whether or not it retains it. Yeah, that's the trick.

And it does seem to be like jumping all around the place, so it doesn't seem to be doing the normal charge curve. I think we've got one sick puppy here. Back to my internal mic. Now don't anyway.

um, the voltage is rising. so that indicates that it's a charging curve. So it indicates that it is accepting the charge which causes the voltage. uh, to rise up.

So it's doing something. but whether or not it holds it, I don't know. Okay, I pushed it up to 250 milliamps because I'm a rebel. Um, it seems to be holding.

Ah, I can just just can't wait. I'm going to disconnect it and see what happens. 3.8 Well, yeah, I would have expected it to drop back. I could put a reasonable load on that of course and uh and see if it drops.

But all right, let's do that. So let's hook that up to a load. Well, constant current. Uh, let's just draw a small current.

Let's just draw like 50 mid 950 amps. Oh five. enter Okay, 50 milliamps constant current. so I'll turn that on.

Let's you know, expect it to drop a little bit. Let's see if it like dramatically plummets. And yeah, it dropped right down to 3.03 so it can't even sustain a uh, like 50 milliamp current. So yeah, that batteries all show and uh, no capacity.

So yeah, there's something something wrong with that. and look, it's just oh no. it's going up. it's it's jumping all over the place.

Actually, it's a bit jackrabbity. Yeah, something very wrong with that battery. Try 10 milliamps. Series resistance is uh, is very high.

That indicates that. Yeah, it's uh, gone the way of the dodo. Let's just wind that up and see at what point it just dies. 20 milliamps.

Come on. a battery like that that can't deliver 20 milliamps. 30 milliamps is just, yeah. hopeless.

Not even going to get 100 milliamps before. It's just yeah. it's toast. That will work very nicely.

Thank you very much. So I've got the probes on the back like that. All right. So let's give this a bowl.

I've got it. Uh, 3.7 volts. Which is, you know, nominal for a Lithium polymer. Um, half an amp? Because well, it might turn on the Wi-fi or something like that.

So push. this button's a bit tricky. 170 milliamps. It's working.

It's booting. It's booting. Woohoo! Your Kindle knee. It needs repair.

Here it is. Yeah, yeah. Here's the catch. there.

You go. upside down. all the electrons are going to fall out. Repair needed.

Your Kindle needs repair? Please Contact Kinder Customer Service. Battery Invalid. Negative one. Bastards.

Now unfortunately. Um, that's not going to let me test the touchscreen, so that's really annoying. We should be able to prise this out. You can see the two terminals in there, so I'll cut those and then that should be safe to actually sell.

The pouch should just be like stuck in the bottom with some double-sided tape or adhesive stuff. See if I can prise that battery out. Gotta be careful, you don't want to. uh, actually pierce the pouch.

I can feel it breaking. It's breaking. As in the adhesive. That's a metal backing.

I thought that was all plastic. It's not came out of the frame. The plastic frame like that. That's interesting.

Wow. It's kind of annoying actually. So I have actually cut both of those tabs on top and the one down in there does seem to go down to the Pcb down in there. some sort of poly switch because I want to keep the Pcb intact and then potentially like just mount a much smaller battery in there.

and then just wire it on. It Should work. so it's just a matter of separating the adhesive in there. I'll get it eventually outski.

you want to dispose of that Dupont Dupont? No mix that looks like it's damaged, but that's actually not. Um, the internal cell. That's just the outer uh, wrap. So no, I haven't bent, haven't damaged, haven't pierced that, and uh, it's a bit how you're doing.

If anyone knows why they use a metal backing on that instead of a like a whole plastic carrier, please leave it in the comments. So there's our main board. Is that our main charge controller? Or is that a mosfety that looks for all the world like a mosfetty pin out? Doesn't it? I think we got an external fit there. The controller is likely that little sucker down there.

There we go. Is that our poli switch? Yes, I do actually have a draw for this. And yes, it is labeled. There you go That looks alright.

That looks like oh, that one looks a bit fatty. Yeah, thousand milliamp hour. Or might be a bit too thick. So apart from this little itty bitty thin thing, I can't remember where I got that from.

Obviously, I pulled it out of something. I thought, oh, that really thin one could be useful for something off your squint and makes it and shoving it back in here. Yeah, that's really bulgy. Not much, uh, thickness left in that to like dig out a a pouch or anything.

Although techno, this actually does have a bit milled out of it. You can see all the milling marks and everything. So if I take out the metal that might do the bit you know it's like point one millimeters. Everything counts.

Yep, I reckon I can do that. I'm gonna go ahead and use that puppy so I'll solder it in. now. if you sit it flat, a little bit of wobble wobble? Yeah, but uh not.

Ah, it's good enough for Australia. Check this out. This is very weird if I tack the battery on there, which of course measures 3.8 volts. No worries, it doesn't come through.

Why? It's like the low side mosfet is off if I buzz this out. The positive actually goes through to here. No worries. and the low side goes through to the test point here on the one side of the mosfet and then on the other side which is the actual battery.

negative. Uh, terminal? No, that's now positive. What? What? That's now a direct continuity What? So if I take that back, I should be getting wow, there's a there's a dicky contact in there somewhere. I'm going to have to solder that properly.

Yeah, so what I've done there is. I've just actually removed this uh, metal cap that they had on there and I've also removed tag going over to here and solder does, uh readily take to that side of the fuse. So yeah, I, uh, the tabs just don't work. So I might like put the battery over here and just put some little wires over.

That's probably easier. There we go. that's much better before I cover it up. Tada 3.8 volts, no workers and that'll be good enough for Australia.

Well, it's done something. We're back to that screen beauty, so let's plug that in see if it'll accept charge. our Led's on. Don't know if it's uh oh? Yep.

Yep. Yep, we're the winner. chicken dinner I suspect. Okay, well, it's just done that.

I can't remember if you should be able to power these while they're charging right? Or maybe I know, maybe I have to reset the thing or something. No, it's is it still in its original state? I mean that it shouldn't be showing that low a battery. Um, I didn't load that battery down. but I, you know, surely Murphy wouldn't have.

uh, let me put in another cactus one? No, no, no. Oh, was that my imagination or did that go up? I think it moved up by a pixel. No, it's not really increasing. Unfortunately, nothing really else around to measure is there? It's all under the damn cans.

So yeah, unfortunately I can't get it to uh, do anything. If I hold down the button for 10 seconds, the little switch off and stay off and then when I release the button, it'll come back on. So the processor and stuff is being powered. But I don't know.

Maybe I have to wait longer, but it's It's not going up a waiter like half an hour already. it's doing nothing. So what I've been able to do is, uh, hold down the reset button for like a minute And like the lead here flashes, uh, green briefly and eventually when I release that, it clears the screen and puts the charge symbol back on. so that like the processor and everything's working, it's getting voltage from the battery and every like it's doing, everything is driving the screen and hunky-dory but it refuses to charge by the looks of it anyway.

And if I have a look at the current monitor, look at this. It starts out drawing about 70 milliamps, but now it's drawing 460 milliamps. That's not going into the processor because the Kindle is ridiculously low power. that's constant.

like it's charging the battery, yet there's no indication that it's charging. Possibly like a secondary fault with the charging chip, because the battery was definitely folding. Oh yeah, there we go. Green.

Oh, hang on. No, it's doing something. Oh no. Oh, there we go.

it's back. Ah, so, either like it's reporting, the state of the battery is too long, it's just switching itself off when there's clearly current going into the battery. I mean, you know I don't want to have to get out and dick around and trying to get like pros out of there. And you know, try and probe the damn thing while it's charging.

and stuff like that. I mean, geez, I've already gone down enough bloody rabbit holes. It's doing something. Flash flash flash.

What does that mean? Hang on. It's finally come good. By the looks of it, I just left it here. Uh.

charging again? Yeah, it's still charging at 460 odd milliamps because it doesn't take that just actively. It takes nothing when it's uh, because the E-ink displays, of course, take nothing. They just they don't need any power to actually keep them going. So this thing just sleeps all the time scanning the uh touch screen and then if you touch it, it wakes up and it changes the page or whatever.

then it goes to sleep again. So it needs Naf, Nafl. So all that, uh, charging 460 milliamps? That's all going into the battery at the moment. but it's obviously, um, that like minute long reset or a couple of cycles of that.

Um, obviously got the thing working. It was really locked up. Oh yeah. Yep.

there we go. We're in. and there you have it. It's charging up there.

which indicator looks like? Oh, but my hang on my. My touch screen works. Yep, that seems to be working fine. So uh, ignore the noise in the jackhammering in the background.

There's some fit out work going on in the office next door. Um, yeah, it works and we've got the little ladies down here. Fantastic! Win a winner chicken dinner. I'm going to put it back together.

Nah. Bloody Murphy. Look, I put the front panel back on. The touchscreen doesn't work.

Maybe there's some alignment issue and it thinks the plastic is touching it, but it should be like a capacitive touch. I think. Okay, this is ridiculous. I can't get this to do anything now.

Touch. Oh no. Now now it's it's done. it.

Oh this. Oh no. it's resetting. This is cursed by Murphy.

This one. Anyway, that is the uh. that is the reboot screen. so I'll get back to you when it's done.

Okay, it's going through its forward. Maybe it just needed another kick in the pants to give it like a complete system restart. So we might be dealing with uh, software lock-up issues instead of hardware here seems to be stuck there. Bloody non-linear bar graphs.

Okay, it seems to be back. Yeah, touchscreen's working and showing the batteries only very low. Plug that back in and charge it so it's obviously you know it's doing the charging thing. No, I don't think there's anything physically wrong with the touch screen.

I think we're just dealing with software issues because like this was my major issue with this, it didn't seem like the battery was failing. It seemed like you know the touchscreen was the thing that was, um, failing. It was annoying me for like a month. It didn't work occasionally, then it wouldn't work and it was just.

it was just really annoying So seems to work so carefully. You saw it. it's working. Let's put this front cover back on.

Please Work. It works. I think that there's just like, really like software lockup issues with this thing. Uh, please.

If you've had experience with this, you know if it happened to you, you know of others that this has happened to. Uh, please leave it in the comments down below. But yeah, it looks like yeah, we just had a fail battery that probably led to weird loss, software lock up issues and stuff like that. I could never get it.

You know, I was trying the reset thing and stuff and that never actually worked. So looks like I had to fix the battery problem and then fix the lock up. Uh, software problems. It looks like it just went through a hard reboot.

then. yep, I think we're good. I'm pretty sure that's going to charge, so I'm going to call that a winner and I can use my Kindle again. Thank goodness.

Oh what a drama. I know that ended up being like essentially just a simple battery repair, but you know there's just more to it than that. You could have like gone down the rabbit hole thinking oh, there's something wrong with the touchscreen and something like that because everything else seemed to be working. So you could have like chased a red herring down that rabbit hole and no, no.

So anyway there you go that is a Kindle repaired Finally! Oh goodness what a drama and the bloody microphone thing. Oh goodness, can't win. So anyway, if you like that and if you like the struggle, please give it a thumbs up. As always, discuss down below, you know what to do.

Catch you next time you.