Replacing the Battery and Back Cover on a Redmi Note 3

A while back I bought my parents a Redmi Note 3. Nearly two years later, turns out the Snapdragon 650 is still putting up a fight in the budget bracket… some new phones actually perform worse than the 650.

So I have no idea what to upgrade them to. Go too expensive and my parents will just abuse it — they toss their phones around, and when something breaks, the old folks feel bad about it.

And abuse it they did: my dad’s phone ended up bent out of shape.

“Bent” really just means the back cover got knocked crooked. Everything else was fine. So what to do? I looked it up and fixing this isn’t a hassle at all, so I fired up Taobao and got to work.

There are tons of Redmi Note 3 back covers on Taobao. I bought mine from this seller, and honestly it turned out solid — fits perfectly, only thing is it doesn’t come with the fingerprint module. You just pry the fingerprint sensor off the old cover and tape it back on.

Swapping the cover only takes prying off the old one and clipping the new one on, but since the phone’s two years old, I figured I’d grab a new battery while I was at it.

Buying some random off-brand battery felt sketchy, so I went with Nohon in the end. A bit pricier, but seems to have the best reputation. Don’t even think about an OEM battery — nobody’s handing you one.

Replacing the battery is way more work. First you have to peel off the adhesive strips. Don’t yank hard at first or they’ll snap. Once the strips are off, pry the battery out slowly and you can see the motherboard.

Stick on the double-sided tape that came with the battery to hold it in place, press the battery in, and you’re done.

Last thing: to keep them from smashing it again, I bought the folks a new phone case — one of those drop-proof ones… doesn’t look half bad either, honestly.

When it comes down to it, budget phones just haven’t improved much, so repair and wait for whatever comes next.