Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Contributed by reader BuckNut.

The battery in my two year old, first generation iPod started to lose capacity after 18 months. It held less and less of a charge until it finally would run about half an hour before failure. My choices were to send it to Apple for $99 and receive a refurbished iPod in return or try to replace the battery myself. After some quick checking I found that replacement batteries ranged from around $20 to $50. This seemed like a better option to me than sending it to Apple for a couple of reasons. First, I am cheap. The cost of the new battery would be significantly less if I did it myself. Second, I have always been into tinkering with electronics, cars or whetever else I could take apart and this seemed like a good challenge. However, the plan of replacing the iPod battery myself introduced an element of risk over sending it to Apple. Would it be worth the savings to crack it open myself? I decided to find out.

There are quite a few places that offer replacement batteries for the iPod and since demand is fairly high there are many choices. I could choose a battery that was exactly the same specs as the original battery, one that offered up to double the capacity of the original, and just about everything in between. I settled on what seemed to be the best bang for the buck solution. I was able to obtain a battery with 30% more capacity for $17.49 including shipping from a retailer on ebay. The battery arrived two business days later and it was on to the hard part, cracking the iPod open.

There are quite a few websites that cover the subject of replacing your iPod battery. iPodhack.com contains a FAQ and ipodbattery.com has step by step instructions with pictures. Please note that the procedure for replacing the battery in anything later than a first or second generation iPod is significantly different and more difficult. The riskiest part of the process is removing the chromed pastic cover from the back of the iPod. I used a small plastic screwdriver and an old credit card. I have seen many suggestions of what could be used. I would definitely recommend something plastic and not metal. One good suggesstion I saw somewhere was guitar picks. The trick is to be patient and not exert too much force. If at first you don’t succeed… well you know the saying. After 5 or 6 minutes of prying and unclipping the back was free without damage to it or the clips that hold it in place. I then used the same small plastic screwdriver to “unstick” the old battery from the pads on the hard drive and unclipped the battery. The new battery clipped in and the cover was back on 30 seconds later. It finished charging in two hours. So far so good.

Would I recommend this for everbody? No. Before attempting this, make sure your IPod is not under warranty, as this procedure will make it void. If you do not have much experience with taking things apart, electronics, or delicate things in general you might be better off sending your unit to Apple or finding someone you would trust to do it. In my case, it was worth the savings to crack it open and give it a shot. I am very happy with the result and had fun tinkering.