hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2220.txt

Episode: 2220
Title: HPR2220: Taking apart a tablet
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2220/hpr2220.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:51:14

---

This is HPR episode 2,220 entitled, taking a part a tablet.
It is hosted by India and in about 29 minutes long, and Karima Cleanflag.
The summary is, in which I fail to discover or correct the problem with my son's tablet.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthos.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair, at Ananasthos.com.
Hey everybody, land here, got a little soundseeing to refer you.
A few months ago, I purchased a couple of tablets for my twin boys.
And the other day, one of them said his wouldn't charge and wouldn't turn on after he tried it on a different charger.
Now, he did say it since has showed the charging screen against when it's powered off.
But it still won't turn on, so I'm going to see if I can figure out anything that's going on with it.
I've already tried the usual things of making sure it's fully charged.
I'm trying to turn it on, trying to turn it on while it's plugged in.
So at this point, I am going to take a shot at cracking it open.
Now this was a pretty cheap tablet from Best Buy.
And I really have no idea where to begin cracking it open.
I'm really hoping it's not glued.
But I am going to take a shot at it.
I've taken a few different pieces of electronics apart now.
Couple game consoles, a couple phones, another broken tablet that I couldn't fix because the USB port had broken away from the circuit board.
It was surface mount soldered.
And I just wasn't comfortable trying to reattach it.
And I'm not even sure I could have probably could have been fixed in replace.
But again, that was another cheap tablet and didn't really want to spend the time on it.
So let me describe.
I've got kind of a kit here that I use pretty regularly on final electronics.
We had a Nintendo Wii that the DVD drive stopped working on.
And Nintendo consoles and even the old games, if you don't know, have...
I'm sorry, just the consoles.
Use a specialty screw that has three wings.
And so I needed a tri-wing screwdriver to be able to open it up.
So my wife was at the local hardware store and she found a game console repair set.
So it's a screwdriver with a magnetic socket on it to accept a bunch of different bits.
And it comes with several different ones.
Most importantly, those tri-wing drivers that I needed.
Also, there's like a reverse star bit, which is needed to open the old Nintendo cartridges.
Some star bits with a circle cut out in the center.
A couple small hex bits and various slotted and Phillips bits as well.
One thing it did not come with is what's known as a spudger.
A spudger is a small plastic or metal pry tool that's used to release those clips that are very, very, very common in electronics these days.
I seem to have stumbled upon a pretty decent alternative.
And that is just plain guitar picks.
I don't know what exactly they're made of if it's just a some kind of a plastic or a vinyl.
But you can get them in various thicknesses and either more flexible or more rigid.
And they seem to work pretty well.
So just looking at this tablet, I'm not noticing any kind of a obvious battery compartment or any externally visible screws.
There is one seam that appears to run all the way around the outside.
Fortunately, it doesn't line up with any of the various ports.
As you got in this thing, there seems to be something in the microSD card slot.
Can't tell what it is.
There it went flying.
Looks like hard candy.
Like dissolved and re-dried sugar.
I don't think that's the problem, though.
Anyway, so I'm going to see if I can get this seam to open up.
Like I said, I really hope it's not glued.
Seems to be a small circular spot here.
Looks like it might have a sticker over it.
I can't quite get it.
My finest guitar pick seems to be just a little too thick to be able to work it into this seam.
Oh, there we go.
Just slipped it in.
So other things I've got handy.
Several sheets of blank white paper.
I'm just working in the living room of our home on the coffee table.
So the paper does a few things.
One, it provides a little bit of a surface to set the device on.
If I need to set it screen down, so there's a little less risk of scratching the screen.
Just talking as I work this, try to work the guitar pick around that seam.
I might have to wedge another one in here to keep it from closing back up on me.
The other thing that the paper is nice for is it gives a little bit better visibility if I'm setting those screws down.
If I know I have a lot of screws to keep track of, I've got like one of those clear plastic tackle box container with a bunch of separate small compartments in it.
About the nice thing about working with a sheet of paper is you can just take a pen, which I also have in me.
And you can sketch out a picture of the device you're working on and mark the position where the screws go.
And you can make several drawings as you go along and put the screws from each step along with the drawing of that step.
Alright, I've got a second guitar pick in here now.
And I'm trying to work my way around this one corner.
I get those clips to release.
I quite got it.
Oh, there we go.
Just had to go in from the side.
Alright.
It's the most way down one side.
All the way down the other.
A few more to go.
Here we are.
Okay.
Just the one end left, if I can get that to release the back cover should come off.
Now I'm always terrified.
I'm going to snap one of these little plastic clips, but so far I've had pretty good luck.
There we go.
The back cover is off.
There's a little speaker there by a port in the back cover.
That little magnet seems to be just sticks right to the little metal shield they have on it.
And a pretty big battery says 2700 milliamp hours.
Some yellow plastic tape over some of the wires.
Battery connection seems to be soldered directly to the board.
So no little socket that could be loose.
You definitely got something in this SD card slot.
Like I said, it looks like kind of dried on sugar, so I don't know if it was some kind of juice or what it was exactly.
But it does not look good.
This might explain the discoloration of the screen that he was seeing before it stopped turning on all together.
So there's some kind of clear yellow plastic tape over some of these connectors.
Some over solder joints.
And then there are some more standard ribbon cable connectors.
One on the right side here looks like it probably goes to the screen and comes up and connects on one corner of the main board.
There's another one just above it.
I can't see what that connects to.
There's a little piece of like a foil mesh tape over it.
Looks like the front camera, front facing camera.
And then the rear facing camera is between those two.
I'm not sure where that one's connected.
It doesn't seem to be directly mounted to the board.
Once we got that I can tell.
There's another ribbon connector on the left-hand side.
I can't see what that's connected to.
Another piece of foil tape over that.
That also looks like it wraps around to the front.
I'm not sure if that goes to the screen as well.
All right, I am going to take out a screwdriver and see if I can tear into this thing a little further.
There are a couple small gauge Phillips screws with a very wide head.
It looks like they're holding the corner of the screen on the left side.
And it looks like it's just held by some plastic clips on the left side.
I think if I take these two screws out and disconnect that ribbon cable on the left side,
the whole thing may just lift right out.
The top corner of the screen has a tiny little microphone that's direct solder to it.
It looks like it's connected to the board.
I wonder if it may have been some kind of juice.
There's little deposits of it all along the left side, especially that SD card slot.
That little piece of foil tape I mentioned and a spot on the battery as well.
All right, I've got the one screw out in the upper left corner.
I'm going to take out the one in the lower left.
That came out just fine.
Now, it looks like there's a little clip holding a wire that goes down to...
There's a little black plastic film that the wire soldered directly to the back,
but not sure what it is.
Maybe some kind of a sensor.
Anyway, I need to unhook that wire from that clip without...
I'm running any strain on those solder joints if I can avoid it.
Get a little pair of tweezers here.
Not very good.
Metal is a little too soft.
They just sort of bend when you try to use them, but I think they'll be good enough to pry this wire out of here.
Maybe if I pry up on that clip a little...
I'm going to try that guitar pick again.
I can definitely get under the clip.
I'm just going to slip that wire out from underneath it.
There we go.
All right, and let me disconnect that ribbon cable.
Now, if you haven't seen these connectors, it's like a flexible flat piece of plastic.
And then the plastic usually goes right out to the end, but part of it is open to the side,
so that for a connection.
And then the slot that it fits into, the ribbon, the plastic just slides in to the contact...
And then there's a little clamp that when you're opening it, you usually have to kind of flip it up.
I'm trying to do that now with the guitar pick in here again.
I never suspected that these would have been so useful as pry tools.
The nice thing about them being plastic is you're a lot less likely to scratch or mar the plastic that you're working on.
You also don't have to worry about shorting out contacts if you're in here, prying around.
Okay, I have that little clamp flipped up now, and this cable should just slide right out.
At least that's what's supposed to happen.
I wonder if that juice or whatever is sort of glued it into place.
There's tweezers to give a little more leverage on it.
There we go.
It was a little sticky there.
Yeah, the contacts look a little discolored.
All right.
There's a little plastic socket that that microphone sitting in.
You have to free it from that.
Normally it would just lift out, but everything on this tablet seems to be a little stickier than normal.
Looks like there's some sort of little rubber jacket over it that I don't want to disturb.
Maybe it'll just lift up.
I just accidentally removed a little plastic shield.
It goes over some collection of chips.
One of them is an Intel.
I wonder what that's for.
Stick that shield back down.
See if I can get under the edge of the screen here.
I suppose it's possible that that's glued in place too.
You don't want to break anything.
I suppose technically it is broken already, but...
No sense making things worse than they already are.
It just can't seem to get the screen to come free here.
Like I said, I'm at least assuming that's the screen there we go.
I managed to get the guitar pick under the edge of it.
One corner free.
Stick the other guitar pick under to hold that so it doesn't slide back in.
I'm going to work the other one across until that side lifts free.
Man, it's really in there.
Maybe I need to remove a couple of other screws.
There's two other black screws on the motherboard here.
I wonder if they may go straight through into the front of the case.
See if I can get those free.
Here's one.
And two.
Is that the combination?
I wonder if the screen was discolored because that juice actually got in between the screen and the glass.
It could be totally stuck in there.
But wait, there's one more screw here right under those microphone cables that's hiding.
If I could just get enough pressure here to get it to come free.
Seems to be turning.
There we go.
Let's try to lift that out of there.
The microphone is slid free of its socket.
It seems to be tipping up just fine now.
Slide it out from under those plastic clips.
And the whole thing is out.
It does not seem to be any of that liquid on the inside of the glass.
Nor on the front of the screen itself.
Not really any more on the motherboard except as already mentioned on the back.
No obvious showstoppers here.
Although I'm sure whatever this liquid is could definitely have caused the damage.
Let's see if I can get the power switch.
Nothing on the screen.
No little LEDs or anything to go off of.
All of the contacts on the ports appear solid.
Let's try plugging it in.
Let's see if that works.
All right.
Let's look at the power and find that power button again.
Still nothing.
I am afraid this tablet has breathed its last or the damage has surpassed my level of technical ability for fixing.
Hopefully by taking it apart I haven't avoided my replacement plan.
Knowing that these kids can be kind of hard on electronics I went ahead and purchased the two-year replacement plan for a percentage of the initial price of the product.
I don't think he'll be getting that one though I think that one of the replacement will become mine.
We'll see how it goes.
All right.
Thanks for tuning in. Talk to you all next time.
You've been listening to HECA Public Radio at HECA Public Radio.org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
Today's show, like all our shows, was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is.
HECA Public Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomicom computer club and is part of the binary revolution at binwreff.com.
If you have comments on today's show, please email the host directly, leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released on the creative comments, attribution, share a light, 3.0 license.
Thank you.