My trusty, 7-year-old, Bluetooth speaker had stopped holding a charge for more than 20 minutes, so I decided to try to fix it. Suspecting the batteries probably needed replacement.
I initially contacted the manufacturer, though they do have instructions and spare parts for other products, they were not able to help in this case. So I had to go it alone starting out looking for repair videos on YouTube and reaching out to others on the Global Fixers Discord forum.
Unfortunately, no one had ever repaired one of these, though I did find details of similar products. Studying the seams in the plastic highlighted the sticker on the bottom would need to be removed which I carefully removed with a scalpel
Someone on the Global Fixers suggested the screws might be hidden behind the front grill which unclipped easily
Once inside the cable to the battery and back panel was unplugged to separate the two halves
Then I could remove the battery pack
The battery pack had no markings so needed to be dismantled to determine its contents
The battery pack consisted of two 18650 batteries and a battery protection circuit. I did discover similar complete replacement battery packs that I could import from China but the quality and safety of these are unknown so I opted to build a new one using buy two new Samsung batteries from a UK-based vendor: battery 101. Buying batteries with pre-welded solder tabs made the whole process much easier. I unsoldered the protection circuit and resoldered the new batteries, using electrical tape to hold it all in place.
I then reassembled it in reverse and it worked like new.
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