Disassembly Guide: Cowon S9

[trikon000]

This will cover taking apart a Cowon S9, model used is a COWON S9 32GB Titanium/Black from jetmall.net.

Tools used:
Electronics screw driver set
A very thin and pointy pin
Precision Phone Disassembly Tool set (optional)

This guide should only be used if you do not care about the product warranty
or your device's warranty has elapsed. Onto the guide then.
















Now that we have the S9 out we can now flip the device over and see the backside where the screws are. The screws are covered by plastic covers that need to be removed. With a pin or thin needle we will need to remove the plastic covers, put them on wax paper or something.

In the diagram below, the plastic covers are marked:







We can now remove the screws, now that the screws are removed we can use the electronics flat head screw driver or phone tools at this point. I have opted for the phone tools for this part, they leave less visible marks when used.




At this point the S9 should be on the table or workbench when you pry the back off. Not doing so will result in a loss of the buttons when the back seperates from the device. Each side of the back is held in place by 4 internal snap on clips on each side, that is a total of 8 holding the back piece. Finding a space big enough for the wedge tools to get between the side and back was near the volume controls.




You will only need to pry off one side to get the whole backing off in some cases.




Once you have the backing seperated we will now look at what is holding the PCB down. After looking at what is holding the rest of it in place we can see that it is held down by 4 screws, the LCD frame and oddly enough the AMOLED Touch Screen flat ribbon cable.

Order you should take them apart are: A, C, B
(yes that labeling is intentional, doing B before C first will rip the ribbon cable)




There is a piece of blue thermal tape on the ribbon cable that needs to be removed before disconnecting the ribbon cable. Lift the black part up and the cable will come out without effort. Pulling on the cable will will rip the dimpled head. The metal tabs on the LCD will need to be poped out of the frame. You will need the wedge tool to slowly seperate it from the AMOLED Touch Screen.







Now that the AMOLED Touch Screen is seperated from the PCB assembly we can now look at what else is holding the LCD and PCB together.

You can stop at this point and flip the PCB assembly over for cleaning of the LCD and inside of the AMOLED Touch Screen.

After looking at the design we can see that the battery is soldered to the main board on the left side. The sub board is soldered to the main board via a riser pin in the lower right side. After several attempts at seperating the battery from the back of the LCD by hand, resorted to using the exacto knife to cut the double sticky sided neoprene off.











This is after reassembling the S9.










I had to use reference images of the volume button forward/backward button to place them back in place, it is not exactly marked and they are actually angled buttons.

This concludes the guide, trikon000.

---

Close up shot of the PCB:



This can be found here:
http://iaudiophile.net/forums/showthread.php?t=28554
http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ad.php?t=43843

My Cowon S9 folder:
http://s186.photobucket.com/albums/x...n000/cowon_s9/

[soluk]

you brave, brave man

[Uphaillife]

nice. very VERY nice. you kick big ass. i mean it.

[Mighty ABACUS]

Yup, you have 'em.
2 HUGE ones.

Congrats Trikon!

[socksfan]

I think I held my breath throughout the post, haha.

What drove you to open your S9? Curiosity?

[Mighty ABACUS]

Originally Posted by socksfan

I think I held my breath throughout the post, haha.

What drove you to open your S9? Curiosity?

Its the Prestige dude!
I also did something like that on a brand new HP tablet/laptop ages ago.

[34.50]

awesome

[Loba]

Nice that it didnt break. you the man!

[Don't Panic]

I call this the post of the week, maybe month.

[TheDarkSide]

You, my friend, have BALLS!!!!!

[paulr]

Nice disassembly, and yes, some of us have a primal urge to take things apart. I disassembled my D2 a couple days after I got it.

Trikon000, if you have a caliper, can you post the exact dimensions of the battery, particularly the thickness (this really needs a caliper to measure accurately, but the height and width can be measured with a ruler)? It would be good to have a database of battery dimensions for the purpose of identifying possible sources of replacement batteries, such as repurposed cell phone packs. Thanks!

[trikon000]

I am fine with someone else taking credit over the measurements and such. This isn't to be a technical information documentation.

[zantoz24]

The battery is soldered to the main board, so, can it be replaced? Is Cowon expecting that we throw our S9 in two years when the battery mess up?

[trikon000]

All current Li-on poly batteries in hand held electronics are soldered on, with the exceptions of normal cell phones (not including iphones). I never really prefered this type of battery in anything of such a large capacity like 32GB or anything above 4GB.

[tma888]

Originally Posted by zantoz24

The battery is soldered to the main board, so, can it be replaced? Is Cowon expecting that we throw our S9 in two years when the battery mess up?

Yes. It is replaceable. But not for those who dont know how to use a soldering gun/iron.

But its really very simple to learn how to solder. In the case of the S9, its just learning which is positive and which is negative (and those are universally indicated at red=positive and black=negative).

Dont let people discourage you what you can do with a soldering gun/iron.

Soldering is as simple as touching the hardened lead with the tip of the solder, letting it melt, then pulling out or putting in whatever you like.


TMA.