iPod Nano 2nd Gen Tumor Removal
29 September 2022
A year or two ago, years after putting this iPod in deep storage, I pulled it out and noticed that the screen was destroyed. How did this happen? Did I store it strangely and crack the screen? Nothing else in the box was damaged, but weird things happen. I put it away without thinking too much about it. And today I learned a bit about other iPod models in anticipation of restoring one, and realized that the batteries are stored behind the screen on these models.
Uh-oh.
It's way worse than it was last time. I don't want a tiny bomb in my house, so I need to get the battery out of there pronto. For anyone trying to do this, the iPod Nano (at least this 2nd gen) is messy and not repair/mod friendly. If your goal was to open this without breaking anything, good luck!
Figure 3: It helped that I happened to have plectrums of varying thickness and shape.
Half of the pieces are glued in and the battery is soldered to the board. Some people have tools ready on hand to pry glued pieces apart. All I had was guitar picks with turtles on them.
I hit a dead end once all of the regular disassembly steps were done (which requires a microscopic phillips screwdriver). The battery was just bulging too much to push the logic board out of the chassis. Please don't do what I did, which is puncture a very tiny hole in the outer case of the battery to let the gas escape.
Figure 5: I also made sure to step outside to do this, in the open air, pointing away from me, far from anything flammable.
I did NOT puncture the whole battery, and I'm sure that the battery has been drained for at least a few years, so it wasn't the most dangerous thing in the world, but you still shouldn't do it.
In the end I reassembled everything and now I have a completely trashed iPod that I can put on an anime figure shelf or something, because it has exactly as many features as a chunk of PVC does now.
Figure 7: The final product. It will stay like this forever now.