Philips Sonicare Elite Toothbrush Repair: How to Replace Rechargeable Battery

This video describes my successful home project in rescuing my Phillips Sonicare Toothbrush Elite series. The battery died and I ventured to replace it. My brush is up and running for a year now. If you need you a new battery you can get it here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140396534420&ru=ht... Let me know if you have any questions and good luck with your repair!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Sonicare
• Elite
• Series
• 9000
• 7000
• replacement
• rechargeable
• repair
• battery
• charge
• Philips
• replace
• save
• your
• money
• fast
• solution
• minimum
• skills
• required
• easy
• instructions
• howto
• educational

[1kwahaes1]

which ni-cd battery is required?

[integribiz]

See my comments (right under the video) to find the link to the store yo can purchase the battery from.

[guysmily43]

Thanks a TON for the video. You are a life saver.  I wanted to comment that I had more luck digging in with a pick and prying it up than I did with your cap twisting trick.

Also, I don't know if you have some kind of electrical/computer engineering background, but do you think it's possible to disable the timer on this thing? I just want the button to be on/off. It'd be nice to keep the amplitude switch working, as well as to have the beep every 30 seconds, but I don't know where to start.

[integribiz]

Thanks! I am glad you find the video useful. Now, I do have electrical and IT background and I would suspect changing time intervals would assume chip reprogramming which is would be quite an undertaking since the code is not readily available (proprietary) and the PCB does not seem to have built communication controllers.

[matuschkas]

mine was trickey,dont buy a battery,until you get the old one out.one slip with the soldering gun,and your toast

[integribiz]

You got a point there: this repair requires some skills and patience. I recently added FAQ to my eBay listing for the battery to help you to assess probability of successful repair. Take your time to read it before attempting repair or buying a battery.

[winxpuser100]

instructables%com/community/Re­pairing-Sonicare-Elite-Pro/

Some man thinks that the humidity inside causes the processor error. The reset has fixed his unit, but when he opened it, above the O-ring he saw "a heap of crust and dirtyness".

[winxpuser100]

matthewbotos%com/blog/2007/05/­01/sonicare ("%" means ".")

"The service lady told me to place the handle in the charger, hold the green button down for 10 seconds. If it makes a buzzing noise (it did) then the battery has been “reset”. She said to leave it in the charger for 24 hours and it should be like a new battery." (the service lady has told him this procedure after he expressed his anger with the Philips company for this, and said he would look elsewhere for another brand(OralB).

[winxpuser100]

The easy instructions that can be found on the Internet are really easy:

howtomendit%com/answers%php?id­=72113 ( percantage sign % means dot . )

"put it in charger while plugged in. hold button down for 5 sec, hear 2 buzzes. hold down 5 sec hear 1 buzz. charge 24 hr. should be perfect"

[winxpuser100]

And another interesting fact about reset.

There is a special to do a battery reset on your Sonicare toothbrush. This procedure was told by PHILIPS to one man. First they said that he should buy a new unit because the non-replaceable battery has died. But he said that he is not happy with this and he would buy a Braun Oral-B next ( although its battery is unreplaceable too ;-) ). Then they told him the reset procedure.

The procedure is simple.

[winxpuser100]

He thinks that he has blown a circuit inside that just limits the recharge cycles number.

But there is another explanation of this interesting story - the processor of the unit has just failed (like when your computer freezes and you have to reset it). When removing the battery, he just short-circuited two points together, so the power to the processor was interrupted. So the processor resetted and started working fine.

[winxpuser100]

About the special planned obsolonce (disable charging) function - there are many complaints that the unit stopped working after 18 months. One man said that he decided to remove the battery from his dead Sonicare Elite to recycle it properly (and put the rest of the unit in trash). He said that the process was not easy and there was a flash during this. Then he decided to put the unit back into the charger! And it worked like new! He said that he already bought a new one but now it sits on shelf

[maestrovso]

@winxpuser100 Thanks for the info. I have long decided that Sonicare just want to keep selling you new sets after a couple of years. Both mine failed due to exactly the same design defect that allow water to leak in. Normally it is the crappy NiCad battery that dies first. I am sure hundreds of thousands of this same model died prematurely for the same cause. It is likely for future design, they would make it impossible to replace the battery.

[winxpuser100]

@maestrovso Now they have some units with Li-Ion batteries (but still unreplaceable).

[veganpeacelove]

Helpful, THANK YOU!!

[daves1840]

Question, I have it all back together again and it lights up. It's flashing on the first light. It's been charging for 3 hours, and it's still on the first light. Does this mean there's a problem or does it just need overnight charging? After three hours I was hoping it would at least turn on when tested, but it doesn't.