Hailrazer's - Archos GamePad Larger Battery Mod

[hailrazer]

Yep, it's official. The Gamepad has a lousy battery.

All reviewers say they are getting around 2-3 hours gameplay or movie watching.

It's rated at 3000mAh , but I'm guessing it really is around 2000mAh.

So.................................... Let's put a bigger one in there !!!!!

Archos Gamepad Battery Replacement Guide

First of all we have to crack this thing open. Hmmm no screws. Okay well VERY CAREFULLY you will need to use a credit card to pry the two halves apart. Here is a pic of how another person did it.

Now what are we dealing with...... Here is the entire insides in all their glory :

And here is the battery area with that wonderfully crappy battery with some of that tape removed :

Now since we are going to remove the battery we need to de-solder it from the board. So we will need to de-solder the black/white/red wires as shown on the right side of this pic: (note - I tape each wire as I remove it to prevent shorting anything)

Here is the battery removed :

Now we need to carefully remove the green tape on the wired end to get to the battery pcb that we will be using on the new battery. Once removed we can see that pcb :

There are only two pads to de-solder to remove the battery. The battery + and the battery - pads. Do that and set aside the pcb to use with your new battery.

Now I personally build a lot of portables. So I have a lot of high quality Lithium Polymer batteries lying around. I buy all my batteries from http://www.batteryspace.com. They sell only quality batteries. I would recommend avoiding ANY batteries from China, Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. They will be as bad as the battery that is already in the Gamepad.

Gamepad battery dimensions : 100mm x 65mm x 4.5mm - 3000mAh (yeah right)
My battery dimensions : 85mm x 62mm x 7mm - 4700mAh (tested)

The battery I have is no longer sold at BatterySpace. You will have to find a similar size/capacity battery.
This one should fit but less capacity then the one I used.
http://www.batteryspace.com/polymerli-i ... isted.aspx

Here is the one I used it is slightly shorter and less wide than the Gamepad battery but it is thicker. It still fits just fine :

Now we need to attach the Gamepad batteries pcb to the new battery. Simple enough just be sure to connect the + pad to the b+ on the pcb, and the -pad to the b- on the pcb.

Now tape it up for safety. Attach some double sided tape to the bottom of the battery to hold it in the Gamepad. Re-attach the black/white/red wires from the battery pcb to the Gamepad. MAKE SURE YOU ATTACH THEM IN THE PROPER ORIENTATION !

You're done !

Charge the Gamepad fully for the first time. You may need to do a complete cycle charge/discharge to get the battery to charge to full capacity. I am not sure if the Gamepad needs this or not, but you can do it to be sure.

Enjoy your new longer life Gamepad !!!!


Battery life :
Playing : Android Games and N64 Emulation constantly
Screen brightness : Around 85%
Volume : 50%
Wi-Fi : Off

Before mod --- 2 1/2 - 3 hours
After mod --- 7 hours

 

[samjc3]

You know, you keep this up, and you may actually inspire me to buy one of these Dang things.

 

[ttsgeb]

You went from a 4.5mm to a 7mm thick battery? Wow. What would you say is the thickest battery you could put in that thing without having to cut anything up too much?

Actually, just what do you think the max physical dimensions you could shove in there are?

 

[hailrazer]

100mm X 75mm x 7mm

That's gonna be the max IMO.

 

[Ashen]

Holy flax, I can't believe that battery fits. Nice job Hail.

I've got a JXD S7300b on its way. Hopefully there is room in there for a bigger batt. I like the form factor of the JXD better than the Archos. I REALLY wanted to hold out for the S5600b, but it looks like it got shelved for the time being. 7" screen it is I guess... I'm keeping my fingers crossed JXD hit the mark with this one, it certainly looks awesome.

I'll do a little mini review when it gets here.

 

[hailrazer]

Battery life :
Playing : Android Games and N64 Emulation constantly
Screen brightness : Around 85%
Volume : 50%
Wi-Fi : Off

Before mod --- 2 1/2 - 3 hours
After mod --- 6 hours

This was with the first initial charge. With a full discharge and re-charge it could be higher.

 

[hailrazer]

After a couple full discharge/charge cycles I am up to 7 hours !

I will update the first post

 

[condog1]

Hi just got this tablet and I am quite impressed with it, just wondering if the larger battery is still going well. Im thinking of doing this myself as it looks simple enough to do .so any battery that is around 4000 to 5000 mah will do so long it fits your dimentions and you re attach the original PCB board .is this correct.I just love tinkering ,the dpad mod sound good too but one thing at time.

 

[HackerW32]

hello, i have this tablet.
after almost a year of use and charging it 2 times a day on average, the battery died, i had like 10 min of use.
what i did? i took the battery from my old archos 43(that poor guy, didn't know how to swim..) it's half the capacity, but at least i don't have a 10 min use time. i will buy a bigger one some day, i can only find china-hong Kong ones here in Greece..

what i came up with was that, after the job was done, the battery was always 0% like it wasn't there, so if you have this problem too, just start the tablet, and when it boots up, press the power bottom for like 10 sec, the release it. and then the recharge works normal. (i think that it was stuck on not giving any power to the battery, like it does when the battery is full)

thanks a lot for the tutorial mate. the hardest part for me was trying to open this..
my first battery transplant had a 100% success.


i have a question, i want to test it, but i don't think that it is that easy.
can you put like 2 or more of this batteries together on a tablet? i have plenty of small batteries at 1250mah, they have 1/4 the size of the original archos gamepad battery, so i could fit 4 of them in there. is this possible?