I promised a while back that I would put up more pictures of the inside of the DR1000s. Well I put them up at http://dr1000s.blogspot.com...

If you need more details of something then let me know ... send me a note or something ... and I'll see what I can do.
Please, put more with sensors, plastic pieces and screen. :-)
I've put up a picture of what is behind the capacative buttons but the screen itself is really hard to get to and it is probably really boring , like what the backside of an LCD film looks like.
Thanks for the pictures. I'd like to get a better understanding of how the back cover is fastened. Clips I suppose, but how many? And where are they located? Such things are very useful to know if I need to open up mine some day.
The battery is Varta poliflex - I've found some models overviews here: http://www.matrix.es/docs/PRODUCT_OVERVIEW_VARTA_PoLiFlex_BATTERIES_en.pdf
There is an interesting battery (2nd page) - it seems to be the same model but doubled - so that it is twice as thick. I wonder if there's enough space to squeeze it in? kleykenb can you check whether it is the case?
Alternatively there's another one twise as wide
Great job kleykenb! If you have the time, could you put up detailed instructions on how you opened the DR up (where each screw was, anything that had to be pried open etc)?

I know that when you opened it you didn't have any real intention of putting it back together, but do you think you could if you wanted to? Or did you have to break/bend something to open it up?

For posterity, here is a link to the original thread.

Nice find but *gah* they could have used a better battery. So the battery is not 1300mAh as we originally suspected (and I thought someone confirmed, guess there was some mistake), but even an smaller 1140mAh. Compare this to the Kindle 2 that is supposed to pack a 1530mAh.

Details: All batteries are 3.7v.
DR Battery (Varta PoLiFlex PLF 503759 B): 1140mAh, 5x59x37mm, 21g
Possible alternative 1: (Stacked configuration, Varta PoLiFlex 2P/PLF 503562 B): 2220mAh, 10.2x63.5x34.5mm, 44g
Possible alternative 2: (Stacked configuration, Varta PoLiFlex 2P/PLF 423566 B): 2000mAh, 8.6x67.5x35.5mm, 40g

From the pictures on the original thread, it looks like we have some room on the longest dimension (height), but none along the width. However, both the above alternatives are more narrow than the original battery, so that is not a problem.

We need 4.5mm more along the height, and 5.2mm along the thickness. kleykenb, do you think we could fit another 5.2mm? I am not sure what comes up against the battery as the case closes, is it the plastic ribbing? Can these be abraded away? If it is just a few mm short, it might not affect structural integrity (Star Trekky, I know). If not, we can try the second option, where we would only need 3.6mm along the thickness (but 8.5mm along the height). The 2000mAh will still be a significant boost in power (about 75% more).

I hope the bigger battery has the same electrical interface as the ones on the first page, but it should be possible to work those things out if we can fit it.

Edit 1: It looks like the DR itself is only about 10mm thick (I used a ruler, not calipers), so the first option is going to be either a very tight fit or impossible.

Edit 2: Even with twice the capacity, things are not going to be too different, IMHO. In terms of usability, the device will be able to stay in its (now unobtrusive) sleep mode for up to a day, perhaps, but I really don't think people are running out of battery on the DR during the course of the day. Its more an annoyance because the DR has to be periodically charged whenever it is not in use, and you cannot leave it aside every now and then without shutting it down. So to really get those "weeks" of using time, we need a suspend-to-ram function. Then we can really talk about the battery time as the "number of page turns", hopefully in the 5000-7000 range.
Replacing the battery is only half of the story, I assume that the power management SW of the DR is tuned for the used battery. So replacing it with another could even destroy the battery (by unloading the battery too much) or lead to dangerous situations (exploding or extreme hot batteries).
Are there any 'battery experts' in this forum to shed some light on this part of the problem?
Ok, from memory :
1) the most important is to remove the rubber knob at the back. Behind it is the ONLY screw that really prevents you from opening the device.
2) remove the plastic pieces that are right above and below the Capacative Button. The way to do this is simply by pushing them up, respectivly down, NOT sideways. This probably is going to require some prying in the gap right between the capacitive button and the plastic pieces. Best done from the backside so the marks the prying may leave are invisible from the front.
3) now the most important thing : all the rest is prying ... I will investigate if there is a way to know exactly where you have to do this prying but I myself just had to bend and pry carefully starting from the bottom up on one side and then proceeded with the other side. I can still put toghether my DR but not without some aesthetical damage from all the prying...

PS: very important, DO NOT unscrew the plastic on top of the Capacative buttons, you don't need to do that and what is underneat is just too fragile to mess with.
I'm not an expert - but it seems to me that dr software has nothing to do with the battery - apart from the battery meter, of course. As long as voltage is the same it won't make any difference - the battery will discharge slower if it has greater capacity.
A mis-tuned "battery meter" can cause the device to shut down even if the battery has plenty of power left, at least it could on the iLiad. See iLiad Battery Hacks: Part 2 -- 35 hours of battery life! A how-to guide.