Handheld Console Battery Replacement

I recently got back into retro consoles so I started playing around with my old Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. Despite having replaced the batteries in both numerous times over the years, neither could hold a charge for more than a few minutes. I tried purchasing some replacement batteries from eBay and Amazon but none of the units I tried were any better. It seems that any replacement available for purchase is old stock and lithium batteries do not like being in storage for a long time. I decided to make my own replacements by buying new li-po cells and savaging the controllers from the old ones.

Swapping out the DS battery was pretty straightforward. I started by peeling off the label and carefully slicing open the plastic housing. Then, I took out the old cell with its protection circuitry and did some de-soldering. After that, I soldered the protection PCB from the old battery onto the new li-po's protection circuit and wrapped everything up with Kapton tape.

The 603048 li-po cell I got needed a bit of tweaking to fit in the compartment. So, I gently bent the leads until the PCB sat flat on the cell and used some spare plastic parts from the original to make sure it fit snugly in the console.

My DIY batteries next to OEM batteries

Replacing the PSP battery was a bit more involved. I wanted to use a much larger battery than the original to greatly extend play time. My PSP is modified and can play games directly from the internal storage, so the disk drive was unneeded. Following some guides I found online, I removed the drive internals and trimmed some of the plastic with side cutters. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures before the cutting but you can see the cleared out space inside the PSP below.

Closeup of the DS battery compartment

As with the DS battery, I carefully opened the plastic housing and desoldered the PCB. I then soldered it to the new cell. The new cell fit into the PSP with room to spare so I secured it with double-sided tape. This has the added benefit of protecting it from any sharp plastic points below it. After the cell was secured, I lined up the conector on the protection PCB with the contacts on the PSP. I then taped it down with kapton tape.

Empty drive and battery compartment

My new replacement cells are a huge improvement over the originals. I now easily get multiple hours on both devices and these cells should last for the next few years. An easy and very useful way to breathe new life into aging video game consoles.

PSP with replacement battery