Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (1724) Battery Replacement - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / repair

author: thinkfat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 08, 2019, 09:18:17 am
content: I'm in the process of replacing the battery of a Surface Pro 4 Windows tablet PC.As expected, as this is the first time I'm doing such a repair, things are not going smoothly. I'll list a few caveats here for other people attempting this for the first time:Be particularly careful when you remove the display. If you use too much heat, the LCD itself will delaminate from the digitizer. This tends to happen especially around the edges. 200°C seems to be good, hotter might be better since the adhesive is _really_ strong, but much hotter runs risk to separate the LCD from the digitizerPatience is king. Go slowly around the corners or you will risk breaking the glass.Take particular care when separating the top edge of the display, not only is there the camera and other sensors, there's also the Wifi and BT antennas! Those are made of copper foil laminated onto thin kapton tape. The screen is glued onto these antennas and you will tear them if you use too little heat and a sharp-edged prying tool. Or if you're a klutz, like me.There is no way around removing the main logic board. Essentially, you're looking at completely disassembling the whole thing.I'll update the thread as the repair goes on, now waiting for the replacement display and antennas to arrive..BTW the reason for the battery replacement is that the battery has puffed up. The Surface Pro 4 has a bad design flaw in that one of the heat pipes from the CPU basically ends in a large copper slab that is placed right on top of the battery! So effectively part of the waste heat from the CPU goes directly to the battery, which does not like this treatment very much.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2019, 12:22:26 pm
content: I really dislike products that make it hard to change the battery. They are essentially engineered to be disposable...

author: dferyance
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2019, 03:32:12 pm
content: I'm impressed, this is far from being an easy repair and is easy to break. I have a surface 3 (non-pro) and I used to love it until I ran into the repair-ability problem. It needs a new micro usb port. No problem, I'll solder a new one on. Wait, where are the screws? My headphone jack also broke which is simple to re-solder. But same problem, if I cannot open it, I cannot fix it. I have no idea on the battery, it is getting old and is probably needing of replacement too.Now I'm torn in regard to purchasing a new tablet. I could again go cheap for something disposable, or I could go expensive for something that is actually repairable. What is nuts is that many of the expensive tablets are not repairable. I'm considering the HP Elite x2 as iFixit indicates it is easily repairable.

author: jogri
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2019, 05:06:23 pm
content: You don't need 200+°C to soften the adhesive, 80°C (but with deep penetration of the heat) is more than enough in most cases. Use a Kirschkernsäckchen or a bag (no plastic bag, for obvious reasons) filled with fine sand and put it in the oven at 80-90°C. Lay it over the corners of the screen and just let it sit there for a few minutes.@dferyance: If you don't mind having a laptop that is not as thin as a Surface, Thinkpads are a good alternative because they can be taken apart rather easy. I personally bought a Yoga 12 after having three Surfaces fail on me (2x screen, 1x battery).

author: thinkfat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 08, 2019, 07:03:26 pm
content: Quote from: jogri on October 08, 2019, 05:06:23 pmThat is a really interesting suggestion! Thanks for that

author: thinkfat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2019, 11:28:36 am
content: Just a quick update, the display has arrived, now waiting for the antenna assembly to complete the repair.

author: thinkfat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 23, 2019, 09:22:54 pm
content: Antenna assembly arrived today, hopefully I can complete the repair this weekend.