The time has come. I put a 3000mAh battery in my 7th gen and I’m not sure if I got the wrong size but the fit was extremely snug and took some effort to close the case with it in. It also ended up pressing on the DAC / headphone jack too hard and somehow only the right channel in my earbuds worked unless I placed the battery in just right. I had enough and swapped down to a square 2000mAh battery. I took the iPod apart to swap and as I popped the lever up on the battery connector, the connector came with it. Neat. New unexpected project that I feared every time I had to disconnect the battery.
A new logic board is the easy route but the pads were still on and the iPod works great. 20 year old solder joints fail. It happens. Only soldering a handful of times through-hole and never SMD, I figured this was a great time to start. If I fail, I buy a new logic board.
I practiced a bit on a spare board beforehand and decided to full send. For reference, I used flux with 0.3mm lead/tin solder and a pinecil iron with the very fine tip option. Hardest part was the middle pin on the 3-pin side of the connector because it’s tucked right behind that 4R7 part and I risked melting the connector itself. It took some stable hands to push the connector down while getting each pin covered. It doesn’t look great but all points are connected and doesn’t budge if I put some pressure on it. I plugged in the new battery and immediately powered on!
I wanted to share this in case anyone has a fear of their connector eventually separating and needing a solution. If you’ve soldered before, I’d definitely give it a try. It wasn’t the easiest or cleanest job but took maybe 30 minutes of patience. You will definitely need a fine tipped iron and 0.3-0.6mm solder to avoid giant blobs covering all leads at once.