iPhone 3G Battery Swap

A number of months ago my wife received in the mail an iPhone 3G from her son (Thanks again!). He had upgraded to an iPhone 4. Up until two weeks ago she had been using it as a fancy iPod Touch and for making Skype calls (since it has a microphone on it). Two weeks ago she got a new SIM card for it and began using it as a pay as you go phone (AT&T does not allow pay as you go data on an iPhone for grreed reasons). She was very pleased and excited with this development. Well then last week it stopped charging properly. She was bummed to say the least.

Off to the interest we went and sound a number of sites that show you how to swap the battery out in the phone. We particularly liked the video and PDF guidance provided by ifixit.com.

So we ordered a battery and tool kit ($5 and change) – which arrived Friday. So Friday night was swap night for the battery. The Repair kit comes with the following items:

1. The replacement battery (not shown)
2. 2 Spudgers
3. A guitar pick
4. Another guitar like pick
5. A #00 Phillips head screwdriver
6. A flat head screwdriver
7. A suction cup (helps to separate the screen from the back of the unit.

 So I removed the SIM card from the phone and began removing the bottom screws by the dock connector. This is where the night ended. We had a challenge getting out the second of the two screws on the bottom of the phone that you must remove to get into it! So off to a few stores to see if we could find a very small ez-out (no luck) but we did find a precision screwdriver kit (another $6 or so). This kit had a 1 mm flat head screw driver that eventually (Saturday morning) – allowed the second screw to be removed so our adventure could continue.

Next we continued to follow the guide and undid 6 cables, 9 more screws, and the logic board and finally got to the battery. Here are some pictures to illustrate this for you.

3 cables that connect the screen section to the logic board.

A screw is hidden under the Do not remove sticker.

Logic Board for the iPhone 3G

A little elbow grease and a spudger tool and out came the battery!

In with the new

Finally everything removed and disconnected back in (in reverse order) and the iPhone was returned to normal. A quick power up test and all was found to be well. After a little charging I made a test call from the phone to the house line as a final test.

So the bottom line is – if your iPhone battery is not holding a charge – you (yes I mean you) can replace your own battery! It just takes a little bit of time and patience to get through it and make sure you don’t damage the ribbon cables. This will save you loads of money paying someone else to do this for you or for replacing your device.