Sony NW-A300 Walkman FCC Teardown
The Sony NW-A300 internal documents have been available to download for a while but 2 of the files were not loading, so I decided to wait. Now all files are working, and we can finally get a good look at the inside of the new Walkman. The teardown is not a full one, but good enough to see what is inside.Removing the rear panel will require the use of a heatgun or a heating plate to warm up the adhesive which holds the panel in place. The adhesive strips are shown with the red arrows.
There appears to be 2 clips/tabs (yellow arrows) which hold the top of the rear panel in. These will need to be un-hocked in order to free the cover from the main body. The cover appears to be made out of a plastic material, so it should be easier to remove than a glass back, but could still break as I am not sure if it is flexible or stiff plastic.
Removing the rear metal panel, reveals the battery and some of the connections to the PCB. The battery takes up the majority of the interior space.
The battery has 3 cables, red (positive), black (negative) and white (thermistor). The connections are soldered, so replacing the battery will be difficult for any soldering novices. In addition, the connections are very close together and near other components, so this adds to the difficulty level.
We can also see 2 ribbon cables, one for the side controls (long cable), and one for the 3.5mm audio jack, shorter cable.
The battery model is the LIS1650, which can be found online if a replacement is required. I believe this is the exact same battery as in the Sony NW-ZX300. It has a 1500mAh capacity, which is more than the old NW-A100 battery, which was 1285mAh. This larger capacity is one reason why the new NW-A300 has superior battery life to the NW-A100. From the FCC documents, it appears that Murata is the manufacturer of the battery.
Removing the battery reveals the main PCB and the copper strip which we first saw in the comparison post
Removing the PCB reveals the the another metal shield/piece which separates the LCD from the PCB. We can see the 2 cables/connectors I mentioned earlier, side buttons (1) and one for the LCD display (2).
Here is a clearer view of the PCB out of the Walkman. The wireless antenna can be seen at the bottom of the PCB.
