I noticed the back of my steam deck feeling uneven yesterday. Opened it up to find a spicy pillow inside.
Replacement is underway, but I'm gonna remove this one now, already. Wish me luck...
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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Steam Deck
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Isn’t battery adhesive the worst thing ever?
I remember fixing a few macbooks that had batteries like this. The batteries were gigantic and the adhesive was crazy strong. Dumping acetone behind them with a syringe, heat, and gently prying eventually got them out but it was quite nerve wracking. I guess you can’t dump solvents in a steam deck though
It’s so dumb. Adhesives make assembly easier but fuck over repairability. The only advantages are even distribution of pressure and vibration dampening, which are notable, but are not worth making the main wear item completely inaccessible and a nightmare to replace for the majority of people who don’t have experience with heat guns and sliding cards/thin metal to cut the stupid fucking adhesive that could’ve been replaced by a screw making the product 0.5mm thicker and 0.1g heavier (if that)
This was a chore to remove. I had to heat up the battery so much, I was really worried.
I remember batteries that had a pull tab, why can't they use those anymore
I am considering not using the adhesive that comes with the new battery, but using something a lot less adhesive.
The problem is the adhesive does serve a purpose (mainly vibration/keeping the battery in place). Depends on how much you travel with it and the design overall (I’m not familiar with the steam deck but looking at the ifixit it appears ribbons are fixed to it so having the battery bounce around could be a problem)
That said you can buy those pull tab strips and could probably use them here. I hate those things but why not? Better than what was there, I guess. Especially bc the off brand ones can be fairly weak adhesive
Few drop of 91% isopropyl alcohol all around the edges of the battery and waiting a few minutes helps a lot if you're afraid of too much heat.
I thought about that, but checking the ifixit guide revealed there are holes spread around the battery tray, I was worried that any isopropyl alcohol I tried to get underneath the battery would just drain through those holes onto other hardware, potentially causing damage.
In hindsight, tough, maybe putting some IPA onto the plastic card I used to insert underneath the battery to cut through the adhesive would have worked well.
FYI, it would almost certainly cause no damage. 91% isopropyl alcohol evaporates extremely fast and with no electricity flowing it couldn't short anything.
Actually less worried about shorting something, note worried about it damaging some adhesive or protective film, or anything on the screen, really :)
IPA (of enough concentration) is the same thing you'd use to clean the circuitry/hardware so it shouldn't cause any damage unless it dissolves with the glue and somehow that's damaging (it shouldn't be).
That's one of my go to's when fixing phones. FYI, the plastic playing cards work great for that.
Depends on the adhesive, every electronics iv ever taken apart that had adhesive where literally non issues.
Expect apple products... Then it's an exercise in not putting a hole though a wall in frustration
Apple just enjoys making things hard.
Ehhh I’ve had some nightmare experiences with Samsung, LG (back when they made phones), ~~Xiaomi~~ (edit not Xiaomi, huawei), etc. a lot use pull tabs and when they work they’re perfect but when they’re old or you go just a bit too fast and they break you’re fucked and have to either heat it a ton, drown it in solvent, or slide a thin wire to cut it, all options suck
Funny enough the new apple phones actually have this weird electro conductive adhesive that’s crazy simple to remove. The pull tabs are now terminals, you connect those to a standard 9v battery with alligator clips or whatever, and after a short bit of time (30 seconds iirc) the adhesive just releases and you can lift the battery out
There are videos of it on youtube, it’s pretty cool and the one adhesive I can potentially get behind. though I would want to see what people say about it after a few years of actual use. The initial teardown videos when the 16 came out made it look impressive but who knows if it holds up after 5-7 years
They also don’t use it for laptops so far. They didn’t even use it for all versions of the iphone 16 so it’s not exactly applaud apple time but if they roll that out to replace the nasty adhesives they were using for batteries across their product line it would be a great step in the right direction