Rockchip Player Battery Swap

[knob]

Rockchip Player Battery Swap

Important Note: Please do not attempt this unless you are confident at opening up small electronic devices, you must also have an ability to
solder small wires onto small pcb pads, you also need to have access to and know how to use a simple volt or multi-meter.

Myself or the hosting website can take no responsibility for damage you may cause to your lovely Rockchip player.

I like my Rockchip player but one thing I found annoying is the battery life just isn’t long enough for me.

So I decided to have a look what battery was in there.

My battery was Li-ion 3.7 volts 300mAh, 30mm x 30mm x 3.5mm.
I figured that if I could get something double the capacity say 600mAh then it should in theory double my playing time.
This is for a 2" Rockchip player, for bigger screens you might want something a bit bigger

I found something in a Ebay shop, an Ipod mini battery at 600mAh, everything else was either too big or too small.
It was bigger than the battery fitted, but it looked like it would just about fit as there was a bit of space either side of the existing battery so I just went and bought it.

The Ipod mini battery is 41mm x 32mm x 5 mm.




It came with a handy screwdriver which just happened to fit my player too.
So I got my solder, soldering iron and a few tools to help me cut the connector off and bare the wires.



Here’s the player open with the new battery alongside just to show the
size difference.



Before I could disconnect the battery I had to pry it up from the
board, this was stuck down with some double sided tape so I had to
go careful here and lift it gently, I didn’t want the damage the board
underneath.




It’s a good idea at this point to make a note where the red and black wires
went, red being positive and black negative of course as there are
no markings on the board and we obviously want the get the polarity right
when we connect the new battery.

So I started to de-solder the old battery. I had already decided to completely
flatten the battery in the player beforehand just to be safe as these batteries can explode if accidentally shorted out fully charged.



Here is a picture of the player with both batteries out.

Now we have a slight problem. The Ipod mini battery had 3 wires, Grey, White and Black, (wire colours can vary from this) we just need 2.
So I cut the connector off (cut the wires separately to not short the battery) and bared the ends and connected it up to my voltmeter.

Here’s what I found, The Black wire was negative, White wire was Positive 3.8v and the Grey wire was also Positive 3.8v, so I simply decided to cut off the grey wire and use the Black and White wires.

It worthwhile checking this as your battery may be different to mine and
I doubt there is any reverse voltage protection in these players so it would
probably be curtains if you connected the battery in reverse.

So all I did was tin the ends of the wires and soldered the white wire where
the red wire went and the black wire where the black wire went.

You need to be able to solder neatly to do this otherwise it will probably
short circuit as the wires are quite close together.




Here is the player with the battery in place ready for the top to
go back on.



Here’s the player after the battery has been fitted powered up and booting
up.
Then I went on to fully charge the player, I took longer than before about 4
hours instead of 2 hours, but that’s what you would expect.

Test 1: The player ran overnight playing .mp3’s in power saving mode at level 20 volume and after 11 hours and was still showing the green battery icon.
The player ran for 2 more hours then it finally shut down.

Using the old battery the icon would change from green to amber after about 3 hours.

So I guess I’ve got at least the double playing time I was looking for, at a cost of £4.99 (about $10) including delivery.

Size recap:-
My battery was Li-ion 3.7 volts 300mAh, 30mm x 30mm x 3.5mm.

Ipod mini battery at Li-ion 600mAh, is 41mm x 32mm x 5 mm.


Final Note: My biggest concern with this was it was a bit of a tight fit due to the Ipod battery being about 2mm thicker and I was worried that there could be undue pressure on the printed circuit board, but I have to say my player does seem to working fine after swapping the battery, but It didn’t allow for any variation in battery or player sizes and that could be a problem.

[jp]

Thanks for posting this. I'm considering swapping a battery on a RockChip as well however desoldering and resoldering on the actual board may be a bit tricky for me.

Instead could I snip the wires close to the old battery leaving most of the old wires and then solder the new wires to the ends of the old ones thereby avoiding soldering at the board itself?

Thanks.

[knob]

Only problem I can see with joining the wires is you need to make sure the joins don't touch each other or the metal case, you could tape them up separately or put some sleeving over the joins and you would need to have a bit of room in the case for the extra wire, other than that it should work fine.