The charger works as expected, just that the encoder is twitching and misses steps. No biggy I thought. Just needs desoldering and resoldering the right angle mount encoder. So I charged all my batteries to full. Now it’s time to teardown the charger so I can pull out the encoder and taobao scan. Turns out I can’t see no screws. No iFixit of course, since this is such a niche product. And low volume as well. The too-basic-for-mass-adoption kind, not the limited-edition kind. I pray that it’s all just clips and proceed to wedge my pry tool, a plastic guitar pick that came with an el cheapo multi-bit screw driver set. No dice. So I bust out a flat head bit and try to pry it. The seams split and I had already made my first scratch on the plastic. I jam the guitar pick and proceed to shimmy the flat head along the seam. They split apart until I reach the corner. 

Maybe it needs more force, so I jam another guitar pick to save progress and change the bit to a thicker flat head. No dice again. I repeat from the other side and had easier luck but had to stop at the corner as well. This time I try pushing in the flat head to reach the hex part of the bit so I could apply more force, but the plastic just cracked. There must have been a hidden screw behind the plastic under the laminate. The entire product was ruined anyway, so I had to peel apart my beloved charger like a tangerine. I was hoping to salvage the electronic parts and 3d print a custom housing for it. I was already dreaming up wacky designs. Somewhere along the way, I applied too much force and the plastic around the hidden screw gave up. 

I couldn’t reduce my force fast enough to save the display flex cable from being torn. It didn’t tear all the way like fatigued steel. Just a little bit like a map that was folded and unfolded too many times. But that was enough to sever too many important traces. I didn’t have the experience nor guts to attempt scratching, bridging and gluing them like it’s done in so many ribbon cable repair shorts. The entire charger became parts all because the product design sadist decided the perfect place to hide a screw was behind a display that was laminated to the front surface of the product. Idiot Phone (iPhone) style. I studied the mechanical design, pcb layout, salvaged what I could and discarded the rest. For the skeptical of you wondering why I couldn’t find replacement parts or reprogram the charger, my answer is just this: You do it, I’ll pay you. I still remember that charger fondly. Like ppl remember their first love 🥲.