Cowon A3 Battery Replacement / Disassembly Guide

[otterpopjunkie]

Got my battery today! Four days delivered from ipods99.com. It's a 3.7v, 4200mAh Li-Po battery. Dimensions of original battery are 57mm x 110mm x 7mm thick
Took less than 20 minutes to install. Works good as new now.
When I decided to buy an A3 instead of an Archos, I figured I'd replace the battery at some point. Here we go.
I'm sure there's a guide for A2 battery replacement.. probably exactly the same.. whatever. Here's mine for the A3.

BATTERY REPLACEMENT GUIDE: (it's a cinch! Comments in red)
Tools required:
Small phillips screwdriver
very small flathead screwdriver or needle
long fingernails, guitar pick, or thin butter knife
double sided tape (regular works too)
rubber gloves or very clean hands if you might ever send to Cowon
And of course, the battery.

Use the smallest flathead to lift up and rotate the rubber covers out of the way:


Unscrew the bolts with the phillips.
Use fingernails or a thin object to carefully pry off only the back plastic cover (it helps to start near the plastic cover):


Carefully unplug the battery from the circuit board.
Carefully pry the battery from the plastic cover, it is held in place with double sided tape. Mine took some force, don't worry.

Apply double-sided tape to plastic cover, insert new battery, ensuring the proper direction so the battery wire will reach the terminal. My battery from ipods99.com was thinner and wider than the original. I was worried it wouldn't fit, but it was actually easier to replace the cover than with the fatty original battery! (see bottom photos).


Plug in the battery, put the cover back on the player, making sure the hold switch and plastic cover is in correct position. Press down around the edges to snap back in place (it should line up and snap into place easily). Turn on player to make sure it works.



And that's it! You might not have saved much money, but you did it yourself and it was much faster than sending it in! To make this battery last, it helps to avoid overheating it when charging, recording, or watching movies. I know I got my money's worth out of the old one, but I definitely killed it early by leaving it in it's case while charging/recording for long hours. (And charging other devices its USB port)

Additional photos:
More pics of the original and my replacement battery:

Notice the replacement battery is thinner.. but wider. Fits fine though.


So you could replace the speakers, the hard drive, maybe even the microphone and power terminal. Go the distance and replace the zif HDD with a Compact Flash card or maybe even SD card. Check the forum for more on that.


^The original hard drive.. 500mA @ 3.3v, FYI.

If you remove one screw in the circuit board above the hard drive (near "PMP"), you can pry off the front in a similar manner. THEN you could unstick the screen from the front plastic to clean out any dust, but it's not something I'd like to try. The screen does not appear to be easily replaceable... at all.

[abyss x]

Lovely thread.. 2 Q's:

1) Can i clean the screen cover from the inside while im doing this open head surgery? (im talking about the 'dust under the screen' issue)


2) Is this the ZIF connector to the HDD?

[otterpopjunkie]

Originally Posted by abyss x

Lovely thread.. 2 Q's:

1) Can i clean the screen cover from the inside while im doing this open head surgery? (im talking about the 'dust under the screen' issue)

I thought about it, since mine has some dust in the top left corner.. but I wasn't sure how fragile it was and if I'd be able to unstick the [foam?] tape that surrounds it easily. I'm sure you could do it. Mine isn't bad enough for me to try yet.. but at some point I may. You can see the black adhesive all around it here:

Originally Posted by abyss x

2) Is this the ZIF connector to the HDD?

That's the LCD screen connector. The zif connector is this grey cable next to the hard drive, I didn't take a photo of it on the circuit board, but you can see one end on the hard drive photo.

Thanks, I hope it helps. I have 5MP size photos if someone needs them.

[abyss x]

Its ok Otterpop, thanks for the info.
I dont need to clean my screen, its not in a bad shape.. just wanted to know if its possible..

BTW, i just got an idea how to put 64 GB of flash inside the A3. U can use THIS adapter and put inside 2 micro SD cards of 32 GB each. It worked in my friend's PSP (coz the PSP is M2 compatible).

So now i wonder if the A3 can support M2 cards by adapters, like we all said about the CF and the SD cards.


Any ideas.. ??

[nivlacbot]

Otterpopjunkie - great to awesome post. You just solved the top issue with my A3 with this thread. You're going on the FAQ you have #47... if you have "send me a beer" (/equivalent) button anywhere.. send me the link Thanks man.

Can you also post the battery-life / video viewing time that you are getting with the new battery now.

[otterpopjunkie]

Thanks Nivlacbot,

Yeah I'll update this post with results once I finally drain the battery, so far I've watched two 1.5hour divx movies with video out - meter is still at 3/4, so it's already 20X better than where I was! (At the time I replaced it - it would die trying to play 720-HD video!)

EDIT: After this the battery died after ~1 hour of divx at 5/10 brightness. I don't know how much power the screen drains, so I'll post a better metric once I watch some full videos on it.

[usul]

So any news about the perfs of this A2 battery implanted in the A3 ? What's your feeling about it on a daily use ?

Anyway thx for the autopsy of the A3 : it looks really do-able...

[otterpopjunkie]

I've been using it for music and some video here and there, so unfortunately I don't have a good number yet. My qualitative feeling is that it's about as good as when I first got the player, but definitely a 500+% improvement over the old dead battery.

And no question about whether it's compatible or not, the battery definitely works.

[abyss x]

Its enough, I never thought that the A2 will have different battery sizes than the A3, so no worries here.

[tubafish]

Thanks a million for this tutorial!
After 1yr, my battery is still holding up pretty good, but I'm sure there will come a day...

Looking forward to seeing how your play times compare to the original specs.
Thanks again.

[tubafish]

This seems pretty sticky worthy...hmmm.

[usul]

Actually i've got mine since december 2007 : it was a battery from the dangerous bulging batch...

Still work like a charm...and never expanded ! ^^

[otterpopjunkie]

Sweet I got a sticky

Originally Posted by usul

Actually i've got mine since december 2007 : it was a battery from the dangerous bulging batch...

Still work like a charm...and never expanded ! ^^

I got mine in December 07 as well.. battery never expanded noticeably but it always did bulge a little in the back..

If I had to guess how many hours of video I've watched on this thing.. it would be at least a few hundred, so I am not disappointed at all with how long the battery lasted. I drained that puppy hard.

[divinerites]

Thanks for this. I bought the replacement battery (really cheap in HK) and now it works like a charm.
No more overheated A3 while charging or playing, no more trouble, ans it plays longer. Thanks.

[abyss x]

My bat also works with no issues for 1 year now..