Hi everyone-

I noticed recently that the battery life on my N9 started sucking, i.e. it would drain completely in less than half a day even with light usage. I was almost positive it was a faulty battery so I decided to order one off Ebay and replace it myself. I received the battery in the mail yesterday along with a few screwdrivers that I thought were the correct kind. Only after taking the screen off the phone did I realize that the screws on the N9 were Torx-plus instead of regular T4 screws. As a result, I completely stripped 4 out of the six screws that secure the protective metal cover over the battery and motherboard.

Here's where the story get's interesting, after I stripped the screws I got a dremel tool and cut notches into the tops of each screw so that I could use a flat-head screwdriver to remove them. One of the screws sits right next to the front-facing camera so I had to saw into the camera in the process, completely destroying it. Eventually, after hours of insane effort I finally managed to get all of the screws out and put the new battery in.

As I put the phone back together I accidentally stripped one of the two T4 screws next to the charging port, so now I'm completely baffled as to how I can ever get the phone apart again. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

-bobofosh123

Use the small ball tool (first from the left in the image) of the dremel to eat the whole head of the screw.



If somebody has a better quality of this image so we could read the names even better.

When I stripped a screw on my n900, I managed to extract it by drilling down in reverse on the head. I applied pressure whilst drilling fairly slowly, and the screw rotated out under the pressure. Having not yet opened an n9 I don't know if that process is feasible there, but maybe this method maybe preferable to destroying other components on the device.

take a look at this video, yea video in russian but very usefull

howto takout lickofed screws

I used this method many time and it work well for me. Just, if you dont know howto use soldering-iron, then give it to do who can do this.

Torx-plus? I also had the screw-stripping problem by using a cheap torx set but solved it by buying a Wiha set. It was "normal" as far as I know -- didn't know there were two kinds (?!?). I thought some screws were completely stripped by my cheap torx set but with the Wiha I managed to remove them, fortunately. So you may want to try that. It's a very frustrating problem and I also thought I'd never open my N9 to replace the battery. I'm really sorry about the damaged front-facing camera for you. That sucks.

Next time use this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9u7r4j0atU

BUT be aware that before removing the metal chassis around 9 minutes into the video you need to use the hardryer (or likely) showing at start up to heat up the metal chassis.
He mention it shortly but don't show using the heater on the video.
The metal chassis is glued on!

(Have used it for repair of bowed volume keys)