Opening the little Veer reveals little parts, modular replaceable battery 47
Mon, 09 May 2011 10:25 pm EDT 
The HP Veer isn’t advertised as having a removable battery. HP said that the size constraints of such a small device necessitated that the battery be integrated – removable batteries take up more space. But, we’re the types that are willing to disassemble and hack together phones to make them work on our network of choice, so words like “not removable” tend not to faze us.
Putting our fingernails to work we deftly pried off the back of the Veer, which is held on by a series of clips. Since this is a review unit we’re going to have to eventually return to HP, we weren’t too keen on going on an all-out disassembly binge, as this first opening revealed that the Veer isn’t quite as user-serviceable as its Pre-series ancestors.
What we did see on the inside was interesting. There’s the camera, which is of average size, and the tiny rear speaker. We knew the speaker was small from the size of the grille, but it doesn’t hit home how small it is until you see it completely exposed. There’s also the standard Palm-style antennas printed onto the inner casing as funky angular yellow metal strips. But what was truly interesting was the battery, that big black rectangle with the Palm wordmark on it. The battery actually appears to be a removable battery, though it’s held in place by a metal frame, itself held down by clips.
Having gotten at the battery, we bring good news: it is 'replaceable' - though not for the weak of heart and short of fingernails. From the top it appears to be a standard Palm-style battery, complete with rounded edges and everything. Once it's pulled out, however, we see that it uses a simple contact instead of a plug, but given the placement of the contact, the difficulty (and possible fragility) of removing both the back and the metal frame, we're going to go ahead and say this was battery wasn’t meant to be swapped out on a regular basis like the battery in the Pre. Good thing the Veer manages decent life off this 910mAh unit (the Pre and Pixi phones have 1150mAh batteries).
Check out the up-close gallery of our opened-up Veer after the break. It's nice to know that you could replace the Veer's battery if it goes dead completely, but a mid-afternoon swap is not a good plan.
47 Comments
What about the inevitable case of the phone freezing up, like the Pre always used to do. A battery pull was often the way to get it back up and running. Is the OS more stable now, as to avoid needing a battery pull?
I've not had a hard freeze on the Veer in the time I've been using it. But if you need to force a reboot on any webOS phone, hold down the power button and flip the ringer switch back and forth 3 times.
What if you try to see if it'll take an overclock, but it gets stuck in a boot loop? You can't turn it off...... =(
Then click your heels together & wish to go home to Kansas? :-)
Thanks for the teardown.
I'm sure Opt+Sym+R will still work as a restart along with the toggle restart Derek suggests.
I have never actually had my Pre freeze completely. It gets very slow to a point that looks like it's frozen but if you are patient enough you can go through the normal restart process unless you are in a hurry and want to do the force restart that Derek suggested.
You don't yank the power cord of your desktop computer when it freezes on you, do you?
No, you press and hold the power button which is the same as holding the power button and flipping the finger switch 3 times.
Although, if my PC shuts off from a static shock, to recover it I do need to flip the switch on the PSU which is the same as pulling the plug, resetting all of the internal circuit breakers.
Good to know guys, but I have a simple question for you all, especially HP and Sprint guys! What is my next phone considering that the 2 year contract I have (and many more early Palm Pre owners out there!) will expire next month? Get back to me on thet one, since I am not the kind of person that likes to wait too much with an expired contract for a new magic phone.
Get the VZW Pre2 and stick your Sprint radio in it. You will love the Pre2
Not everyone is going to want to do this.
HP to Precentral: that will be $500 please. :-)
So Derek, did you measure the battery? Maybe it will be the same size as an old Treo battery... or whatever. does the connector resemble anything else from Palm's past?
1) Centro battery was the same as the Pre and Pixi.
2) No, this is new. It's not meant to be removed.
This won't be useful if you can't buy a replacement battery!
All a manufacturer needs is the specs of the innards, so they can make replacements if they want.
Plus a little plastic tool to pry apart the clips for which they'll charge an $10.
This is no different than the iPhone's battery situation. I'm sure HP has looked at the fact that Apple's model hasn't hurt their sales at all. Then there's the fact that my wife has never had to change batteries on her Pixi in the year that we've had her phone on VZW. HP's not too far off the mark, here with this non-removable battery. My only hope is that the Veer REALLY performs well under the multi-tasking demand of webOS. All of my Pre's services are constantly working in the background so the thought of a 910 mAH battery really makes me nervous. It's ironic how the single-tasking nature of an iPhone actually helps it's battery life. While personally, I prefer to multitask on my phone rather than be limited by the iPhone model, my wife still has not captured the essence of how to use webOS yet and will probably only use one or to apps at a time anyway. I'm sure she falls into the center of the bell curve whereas the many of the folks who comment on this site (including myself) are all of the outliers (LOL!).
Don't know about you, but my iPhone4-using trai... I mean "friends", complain about the battery life all the time. A friend of mine gets half a day without charging. It seems people are used to that. In fact my Pre2 goes dead overnight unless I leave it charging or turn on airplane mode.
Looks like a great opportunity for Seidio and its competitors. {Jonathan}
any chance for a comms board swap to work for sprint?
I wish. No way you'd fit the radio in there. Sardines come to mind. I'm this close (fingers together) to dropping sprint for a few months, since my contract is up, and getting a cheap go phone for the next few months. I love my Pre-, but paying 75$/month (not the worst, I know) for the "opportunity" to use severely outdated, however fantastic, hardware seems silly. I could use my Pre- wifi, and just have a $20 prepaid flip phone for texts and calls for the summer. Would save me enough money to buy the Pre3 on whichever carrier it comes out on. But the thought of my data being capped or throttled makes me shudder.
i'm picturing a Veer with the back removed, and a Sprint Pre duct taped to the back with a giant Mugen 3800mAh batter sandwiched in between.
Kinky
Any chance of a few more photos of the touchstone back. How different is it from the Pre? Can you see multiple coils?
Looking at the last photo we can see that there are 5-6 conductors going to the back on that cable. If so, since the pre only has two conductors to the TS coil, I would imagine that the extra wires are for the TTS mode.
From what I can see, the sliders have been rotated 90 degrees so they are perpendicular to the screen rather than parallel to it as in the pre-/+/2. If this is the case, I can see how this would make for the better slider feel. Good sign indeed!
Anyone else find it interesting that the battery is Palm branded? That must mean that this phone was in development before the acquisition -- at least in time for them to order a special sized battery.
So much for this being HP's first phone...
Or, maybe these are REALLY old batteries, like from the PDA days! Now that's a scary thought.
Phones take longer to develop than the 10 or so months HP has owned Palm. For all we know they had these batteries ready a year ago.
Any idea if this can be FrankenPixied?
The slab phone will be HP's first true WebOS phone. Pre3 and Veer were in the pipeline before the merger. However, they were in the beginning stages.
As happy as I am that Derek investigated this deeply, I am surprised HP/Palm's NDA didn't expressly forbid this.
Derek, can we get a shot specifically of that yellow cable that connects the innards to the cover? How delicate is that? That there tells me this is not a task the average joe wants to undertake.
There was no NDA for the Veer.
Seriously, what is it with people and assuming I'm constantly breaking NDAs? :P
You rebel you.
The Veer is out anyway CK! so the NDA would be null. I thought you would know better.
Derek, Thanks for the look.
CK, that's a standard cellophane style ribbon cable. While it is easy to rip, if you're careful, it is possible to work with. Any cell phone has delicate innards. It takes a light touch when working with them. I'd say this is something to think about doing if you're familiar with cell phone innards for a replacement when the old one is dieing. Other than that, I wouldn't recommend it.
Radio is probably different. I think there will be a CDMA version eventually. I don't bye that it can't be made smaller...
If webOS is your religion, then Sunday makes perfect sense!
Its gonna be simple to replace the Veer battery but it will void your warranty :(
I wonder why they connected the back with that cable instead of contact points like the veer? I don't think they saved space... so I'm going to guess that it has something to do with the TTS circuitry.
Derek, anything in there look like it was added for TTS?
And now, can you dissect the slider mechanism for us? I'd like to know how that was changed to be so solid...
If you look at the pics, you can see that the slider has thick rails that are on the edges, like I-beams, instead of having the thin sheets of metal that the current Pre's have. That slider mechanism looks very robust, and will likely stay that way barring a hard hit while open.
Does the hp veer still have the ribbon with the dock icons on it like when you swipe up from the gesture area :)
the conspiracy theorist in me says HP made the battery "non removable" because it has palm's name plastered on it.
The Palm name lives on!
HP Veer, powered by Palm!
Is Dr.Battery able to get infos about the Battery?