EEVblog #1370 - Kindle Paperwhite REPAIR

[EEVblog]

Dave repairs his pesky Kindle Paperwhite with touch screen and charging issues.

[Brumby]

Rule #1 - Check voltages.

Covers the battery, I think.   

[Tek_TDS220]

Serial data lines have become common on batteries for laptops and other devices.  It's a good way to monitor battery health, temperatures, failure of individual cells, etc.  It would be nice if there were a standard software protocol.  This would eliminate any rationale device manufacturers have for not allowing any batteries other than their own.

[engineer_in_shorts]

Didn't you take apart the kindle years ago.......

..... yup just checked:

[Renate]

I'm more of a Nook fan so it was interesting to see the Kindle teardown.
Did I see places for a standard SD card and a micro SD card?
Is there any access for a console UART?
It would have probably told you a lot of what it was doing when it was being balky.

[ChristianW]

I guess the I2C lines could be an SM Bus commonly used in smart batteries for the fuel gauge.
Protocols often follow the Smart Battery Specification - at least the first few registers should be the same... http://sbs-forum.org/specs/sbc110.pdf.
If it does have a fuel gauge, it could have "learnt" the charge and health status of the old battery, and so it is not strange that it reports a low stored charge until it has gone through at least one complete charge / discharge cycle.

[EEVblog]

Didn't you take apart the kindle years ago.......

LOL, so I did.

[nctnico]

Serial data lines have become common on batteries for laptops and other devices.  It's a good way to monitor battery health, temperatures, failure of individual cells, etc.  It would be nice if there were a standard software protocol.

Actually there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Battery_System