Fixed my iPod Nano

Four years ago, my colleagues at BNP Paribas gave me an iPod Nano as a leaving gift.  It worked great and I use it all the time for running.  I have a big iPod Classic too, but this little 1Gb gadget is perfect for my runs (since it has the flash memory and I find it easy to navigate the music while running than I did when running with an iPhone.

The problem is that a few years ago, after running with it through the rain, the click wheel stopped working properly.  It works eventually but you have to fiddle with it.  For example, the menu button wouldn’t work until you clicked it about 5 times.  It was annoying, but I learned to live with it.  I thought about replacing it, but it hardly I couldn’t really justify the expense to myself to get a new one.

So the other day, I stumbled upon some videos on how to fix various problems with iPods, iPhones, etc.  Since my Nano was probably way outside any warranty anyway, I decided to fix it myself.  Around my house, I’m known for fixing things and making them worse (like flooding my own kitchen or making a small leaky tap to a large leaky tap), so it went against my better judgement—but I tried it anyway..

I bought a new click wheel for £3.99 from http://www.appleiphoneparts.co.uk/.  It was tiny and it came in an envelope the next day.  They have loads of parts  I also bought a iPhone toolkit from E-Cell on ebay (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/E-Cell-Global) for £2.95.

I then watched a video made by  DigiExpress in the US (http://www.digiexpress.us/) which walks through how to replace it:

I had to pause this video loads of times at each step, but I got it to work.  It took me about 20 minutes.  My 4-year-old Nano is just like new. When the battery goes out on it, I will be able to replace that too.  I’m chuffed about saving some money by fixing myself, but I’m more pleased that I didn’t have to add yet one more piece of technology to a landfill somewhere.