Samsung Galaxy S i9000 - No Battery Mod

I have a Samsung Galaxy S i9000. Yes, the first one, from 2010. They came with “Wolfson WM8994" DACs in them. Root the device, install Voodoo Sound to take control of the chip and it sounded incredible. It was so good that a few years later I bought myself a FiiO X3 only because it also shipped with a Wolfson chip in it.

Well, years passed, the phone's battery died. I didn't want to replace it with a no-name battery, so the phone sat in a drawer for over a decade doing nothing.

A few weeks ago I tried turning it on, directly powering it through the battery contacts. And it just worked, no tricks needed. So I've decided to make it permanent and designed a backplate that I can pack everything into.

What you need to make it work;

- A generic MicroUSB board

- One 1N5408 diode (to lower the 5V input down a bit)

Just solder the micro USB +5V input through the diode into the battery slot's first pin. Then solder the 3rd pin back to ground on micro USB. That's pretty much it, you're done. I've cut out the battery pin in the middle on the phone because I suck at soldering, but that's not needed.

Feel free to modify the MicroUSB socket on the model if it doesn't fit the one you have. The camera is also covered as I only want to use it as a DAP, but hey, feel free to punch a hole one in if you want to!

Do not try powering the device through its original MicroUSB slot afterwards. At least I haven't tried to… Don't know what will happen. Just use the new one on the side that connects to the battery slot directly.

I don't think the number of people who “loved Galaxy S i9000, have one in their drawer and want to revive it without using a battery” are in the billions… But here it is anyway. The phone works great, you can power it with a 5V charger or a power bank if you're on the go and use the phone as a DAP, which still sounds awesome today.