Encouraged by my success salvaging an useful backlight from a cracked laptop screen, I pulled out another cracked screen from my pile of retired electronics destined for teardown. Today's subject: an Amazon Fire tablet, model SR043KL which appears to translate to the now-obsolete 7-th generation(*) of the product line.

The primary goal of these devices are to put an Amazon shopping portal into our hands, and thus the hardware cost has been subsidized in the expectation of future sales. This was made quite explicit with the bargain "With Special Offers" edition that display more ads than the standard edition. As a side effect, there is little economic incentive to repair these devices. For example, a replacement touch digitizer glass panel(*) for this tablet costs roughly $25, which is half of the normal price for a new Fire tablet(*). Which, by the way, nobody should pay $50 for because Amazon frequently puts them on sale for less.

I got this tablet from a friend who saw no reason to try to fix something when just the parts cost is at least half the cost of a replacement. And he's not alone. The demand for repair information is so minimal that not even our trusted resource iFixit offers much help. No teardown, no repair guide, and only a few questions on the forums. For a "better than nothing" resource I poked around to find a teardown guide for a different Fire tablet to get a rough idea of what to expect.

With memories of shattered glass fresh in my mind, my first priority was to put some clear packing tape over the screen. Reducing the likelihood of flying shards of glass if it should break apart under stresses of my prying. Given the lack of serviceability typical of devices built to low price targets, I expect a lot of prying on glued-in parts.

Using trusty tools from iFixit I started digging into the seam between the bright yellow plastic and the front face black plastic.

I would not have been surprised if the colorful backshell was glued in, but thankfully it was not. Merely held by plastic clips all around the perimeter that I could pop free.

The internal volume is dominated by the battery, which is pretty typical of tablets. The battery connector is reliably held in place by two screws that I could release to unplug the battery, but the battery itself is glued in place. Over on the right just above the battery is the screen display cable, but it is held down by tenacious tape. The rear-facing camera looked like it might easily pop out, but it is also held down by tape. The black ribbon cable in the upper right is for the touch digitizer, and it is held down by tenacious double-sided tape. And I see a speaker in the lower left, which is held by... you'll never guess...

In summary, once we pop off the back cover, there's little else that can be done without doing something irreversible. Almost everything else would require tearing some adhesives loose. I decided to start with the system mainboard.

(*) Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.