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Old 03-17-2019, 09:51 AM   #1
Plato1980
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Plato1980 began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 2
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Join Date: Mar 2019
Device: Kobo Glo N613
Kobo Glo N613 - Faulty battery symptoms and battery retrofit/replacement

Hello all,

I have been a kobo glo user for about 5 years and have been happy with it. So recently I bought a second hand kobo glo for my wife on ebay, which according the dishonest seller was "working perfectly".

Once I received the item I charged it for a few hours and began the syncing or updating to the latest firmware. I first tried updating it using wireless, however, whether it was connected to power or not, it would soon freeze, say at 10% of downloading, and would not turn back on unless I did another factory reset. Holding down the light button and powering it on wouldn't always work, therefore I would have to use a paperclip.

Sometimes the device resisted being turned on. The lights would flash blue and green for a couple seconds and then nothing would happen. Or, the light would flash only blue for 10 seconds or more and again nothing would happen.

Using Kobo Desktop I was somehow able to load the latest firmware on to the device. However, the freezing issue persisted. At first I thought the firmware was corrupted. So I found a couple of different images for the kobo glo and loaded them onto the Sdcard, but the problem persisted.

It would freeze a few minutes after going through the setup process. I would have to reset every time to get it started again. It would consistently freeze when I was trying to connect to wifi during or after setup. I was beginning to think that the root cause was a hardware problem, still not suspecting the battery. The battery was showing 100% charged.

Finally after much research on the net, I narrowed it down to either the USB port or the battery being faulty. I took the battery out of the device and connected it to power and turned it on. Voila! It turned on and stayed on. It was no longer freezing, not even when connecting to wifi. It wasnt easy taking the battery out as it was stuck on with some strong glue.

I had an old nexus 5 lying around. I decided to try the nexus battery in the kobo glo. The capacity was double the size and the voltage seemed to be close enough at 3.8V. I soldered off the connector cable from the original battery first, and then soldered the connector cables onto the positive and negatives of the nexus battery. Positive is on the right and negative on the left, the middle is temperature or something. I connected battery and the Kobo started working perfectly!

Now there was a another problem, the nexus battery wouldn't fit perfectly into where the original battery came out from. It was a few millimetres too big on each side of the battery for it to fit. I decided take the stickers off the battery, at the risk of damaging the battery, to see if there was a way I could make it smaller. I took all the stickers off the battery and only had the foil left on. Then I noticed that the excess foil was tucked into the sides that was causing it be wider. What I did was to fold the excess foil out and over the other side of the battery. Once I did that, with some gentle force, I was able to snugly fit it in.

As a result, I now should have a longer lasting battery and saved the glo from going to the bin. However, be warned, I don't know what the long term effects of retrofitting a nexus battery into the Glo would be. Please take my advice at your own risk.

The nexus five batteries on eBay are pretty cheap. I've seen them as cheap as $13 AUD for the original battery.

And for some reason it seems to be performing better than my Glo. My guess is that it is the extra voltage from the battery, or maybe the image I found off the net and loaded.

Good luck!

Last edited by Plato1980; 03-17-2019 at 09:19 PM.
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