Day 171, incomplete Nexus 7 teardown

A 2012 Nexus 7 came into my possession due to it having a touch screen problem.  The problem made the Nexus 7 barely usable. After faffing around with it for a while I was distracted by something shiny elsewhere and so put it down on a pile of books and forgot about it.

After many months the device impinged on my consciousness and inevitably, as happens to stuff whether or not it is working or useful, I decided to take it apart.  The back of the device appeared to be removable.  Not wanting to destroy the tablet in the process of dismantling I looked for a 'teardown' guide to see if there was some background info.  Step 4 of this ifixit.com guide was slightly useful. There's a video as well but watching a video is just sooooo inconvenient.  Just give me the bloody words and maybe a few pictures, that should be enough.

They were very keen to try and sell some tools that might be used to open the case without damaging it.  I had a look at the price of these purely out of interest but was never going to buy as this was a cost-free, Sunday afternoon task to idle away some minutes.

The things were cheap ($2.95, although much more with shipping) although they were advertised as only lasting 2-5 uses.  They looked like some crappy, moulded plastic, surely making an equivalent would only take a few minutes.  I looked around for a reasonably stiff bit of plastic that might do the job and immediately found an old bank card waiting to be disposed of.  A few seconds with a scalpel blade and I had some tools capable of dismantling the thing.

Here's a front and back view of the 'tools'.

Pretty sure there are hundreds of 'Nexus dismantle' uses out of this old bank card, as soon as the tip gets worn it's a simple matter of running the scalpel blade over it to give it a new edge.  Having said that I don't expect to do this ever again.  The 'tools' worked very well, there was no damage at all caused to the case.

Once I'd taken the back off my appetite for further 'teardown' waned.  I removed the battery, prodded things, then put it back in and put the thing together again.  As soon as I put the back on again it made a sound of relief and started up.  I plugged it in as the battery was low.

It then proceeded to go through four OS upgrades...

Mysteriously the device now appears to be completely functional with no sign of the problem that caused it to stop being used.  Either my intervention, partial dismantle and re-assemble, or the software upgrade have beaten it into life.  The device had apparently started exhibiting the odd behavioural symptoms after an earlier upgrade.  Maybe the problem has now gone.

It's unusual for me to put things back together, there are Palm Pilots, motorcycles, CT scanners, etc, littered around the house in pieces.

But maybe these fingers now have the magic touch.

Perhaps it's even better than that and disassembly isn't even required, just wave my palms above it like a Reiki healer and things will just start working.

Watch out Uri Geller these hands can fix things, not just do wanky party tricks with spoons - that's him doing wanky party tricks, not me, my party tricks are shit-hot.