PRS-505 Tried replacing the PRS-505 battery. Twice. Killed the 505 twice.

[roguexuk]

Hi all,
My PRS-505 needed a new battery, so after reading various posts here I decided to go with newpower99 as they included the tools and had the instructional video.

A week goes by and I get my new battery, and set about installing it following the video step-by-step. I finish and find that, yes, there's power but none of my buttons work. I opened it up again and found that the ribbon cable had torn slightly from me sliding it all back in the case.

So I beat myself up over it and bit the bullet and bought a refurbished 505 online. Which was great I had an ereader again, until the battery died before the week was up. I figured, hey it's okay, i do have that new battery, I'll just be extra careful installing it. Exactly the same thing happened!!!

I don't understand how so many other people can do it and it eorks fine, but when I touch it it all goes horribly wrong. I mean I'm not computer illiterate, I just built my brother a PC for goodness sake. How can two readers beat me ?

What do i do? I don't have the heart to get another 505 as much as i love it, but i do need another reader, I commute and use it at least 4 hours a day.
Is there a reader that can read all the formats the 505 can without the 'change-the-battery-and-destroy-it' feature.

Many thanks in advance for your help

Roguexuk

[gardenstate]

As a former owner of a 505 and now have the wonderful 950, I've learned that it is very important to charge your reader with a dedicated wall unit (like the Sony PSP charger) overnight. Using the PC USB for short or extended durations has been shown to lead to all kinds of problems.

Also -- if you use the mp3 player and have additional memory cards that are full -- they can drain your battery. Try to install a hacked software that allows easy full power shut down. This will extend battery life.

[jakeluck]

I had the same problem with the buttons, if you search the forums, there are handful of people who had encountered the same problem, see: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=115203

At this point, I would suggest reseating the small controller ribbon cable. Make sure that you had inserted it in the correct orientation as that can easily be overlooked.

[roguexuk]

Thanks for responding guys.

Gardenstate. Thanks for the advice on battery usage, unfortuanately I bought both 505's second hand, so the batteries where already lasting half as long. I never used the audioplayer (that's what my iPod is for ) and charged it every four days or so.

Jakeluck. As soon as I broke the first 505, I trawed through the forums and found yours and other's posts about this. Thanks for the advice, but the ribbon's torn about halfway through. It was fine when I removed the outer case, but it seems to be the process of putting it back in, that pulls it the wrong way and tears it .

So now I have two broken 505's. Maybe I should sell 'em on eBay for those who need new screens.

...Oh and I contacted NewPower99 about this, they weren't too bad. They said that they'd never heard of anyone having any trouble like mine before, but they refunded me the cost of the battery, so that's something I suppose.

Maybe I'll trawl round the shops looking for the elusive PRS-650

Roguexuk

[Tom Swift]

Hate to mention it but I have pulled apart my 505 a few times and never had that problem. My problem was with my replacement battery. It did not really fit that well into the 505 but I crammed it in and it worked great for about two weeks then it suddenly quit. My 505 was frozen to the last page I had been reading and nothing would work to fix it. I have an external power supply and left it in for over a week and it blinked orange, which was very strange, but it never recovered. I finally put in my old battery and it now works, but the battery life is once again crap.
I will probably buy a new device shortly. Either the 350 or a Kindle 3. I am leaning towards the Kindle due to the ease of purchasing books but I am not too impressed by its lack of ePub support. Maybe I should get both?

[sasc1853]

The very same thing happened to me. Whilst changing the battery I accidently cut the ribbon cable which rendered the eReader useless. I have now orded a Kindle DX. Anyone need I new Sony PRS 505 repacement battery?

[delphin]

Sorry you ran into this, in a more rational world this wouldn't have happened because devices like your Sony reader would be required to have easily user replaceable batteries.

The EU for example now requires that manufactures of cell phones use a standard micro-usb charger, so folks can just re-use the charger from their previous phone.

This is all well and good, but if these folks were really sincere about reducing electronic waste they would require companies like Sony, and Amazon, and Apple to design these portable devices to use standardized plug in replaceable battery packs.

The manufactures would scream bloody murder about how expensive it would be to physically do this, but I'm an engineer, and trust me this is utter and complete B.S.

A series of only four or five small flatpack type L-Ion battery packs could be standardized that would plug into your device like a kind of over-sized SD card, and this would easily meet the needs of 95% of these devices.

Better standardizing the batteries would make them more of a commodity item, actually saving the manufactures more than the small cost of the plug in socket and mechanical changes needed to use them. So cost not the issue, there would actually be a small net savings.

The real issue is that companies like Apple, Amazon, and now Sony, have made TRILLIONS by intentionally marketing disposable I-Trash products that may be an environmentally disaster, but are an economic goldmine for them.

Sorry for the off topic RANT but, all this silliness DOES matter, because when you have to toss out an otherwise perfectly usable device like this because the battery has died, we now have to consider not only the fact that it becomes garbage polluting a land fill somewhere, but also the thousands of cubic meters of CO2 that went into producing it.