Playdate Teardown

Written By: Jeff Suovanen

Published: 23/08/21

Comments: 25

Playdate Teardown

Published: 23/08/21

Teardown

Introduction

Panic, the company behind this yellow not-a-Game-Boy, say they made this quirky device “just for fun,” and it shows. From the 1-bit screen to its distinctive crank, the Playdate radiates novelty. We just hope it’s as much fun to tear down as it is to play!

Full disclosure: Our teardown unit came directly from Panic, who, refusing all manner of bribes, sent us a teardown unit for free. Unfortunately it didn’t come with any games, so a teardown was about all it was good for. Little did they know, teardown is our favorite game. (Okay, they probably did know that.)

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Tools

Step 1

Some specs for you while we unbox the fun:
Extremely high resolution (400×240) display—2.7 inches at 173 ppi
180 MHz ARM Cortex-M7F CPU
16 MB of onboard memory
4 GB flash storage
2.4 GHz Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.2, USB-C, headphone jack
Mechanical crank because why not
It's clear they haven't goosed the specs on this thing—but then, if you were obsessing over specs, you've already missed the point.

Step 2

As per usual, we kick things off with a cranking good exploratory X-ray from Creative Electron.
The big fuzzy rectangle at left looks like a battery. The castle turret at the top is a printed wireless antenna of some sort. The dark rectangular formation oughtta be a speaker. The crank is easy to spot. And those little dots? Solder balls, for the chips—sooooo many chips.
Technically this shows everything inside, so... our job is done?

Step 3

Inside the crank handle cavity: some secret intel.
Model number PDU1-Y—or is it PDU-Y-01? Either way, it's exactly what we expected.
Our serial number is 1255. Who got the first 1,254 units? No idea.
Hopefully they didn't think to take it apart and put it on the internet. Seriously, who would do that?
Answer: someone not intimidated by these donut-shaped flathead screws. Mmm... donuts.
Hang tight while we noodle on a strategy for opening this thing. If we have to eat a dozen donuts in the process, that's a sacrifice we're prepared to make. Will that help? Somehow yes.

Step 4

That yellow shade... it seems familiar, somehow.
A quick dive into the old dresser drawer, and we recover this 23-year-old prize. It's a match! 1998, meet 2021. What a matchup.
Things that are not a match:
Physical volume—the Playdate handily wins here. Is it even 1/4 the size? ...seriously, is it? We're not here to measure things for you.
Display quality—another win for the Playdate, provided spinach isn't your favorite color.
Crankiness—again, nod to the Playdate.
Take it apart already, we hear you say. As soon as we finish our spinach, you hear us say. And then you wait patiently for the rest of the teardown. Right? Hello?

Step 5

In we go! We grab our big flathead driver for this most diminutive console, and twist away some screws.
Next, a few plastic clips stand guard at the entry point. We're careful not to let any precious nostalgia escape while we wield our opening pick.
First look inside reveals: Tidiness. Yellowness. And an easily-accessible battery, a.k.a. repair happiness.

Step 6

Hold up—there's some sort of warranty sticker guarding this battery.
Zoom and enhance?
Oh, wait: breaking voids your warranty, not simply opening. A tip of the hat to the good sirs Magnuson and Moss, and we carry on—carefully.

Step 7

Battery unpluggability: 8.5/10, mostly easy. Just make sure you don't poke anything flammable with your tweezers.
The battery itself is mildly glued down. Be persuasive, but don't make it angry.
Battery specs? It clocks in at 2.74 Wh (740 mAh @ 3.7V).
That's about 25% of the capacity of an iPhone 12, or:
1.9% of a small car battery (kind of)
Inside the range of the sort of "general purpose" AA battery that Game Boys ate for sport
Close in performance to a 500-pound potato battery once driven around Portland, Ore.

Step 8

With our minimalist Minnow Driver Kit applied to a minimalist device, we separate pretty much everything from pretty much everything else.
Both the display and crank stay comfortably ensconced in the forward housing, along with some button covers.
Everything else just flips out, provided you're deft with a spudger and can persuade a few small ribbon cables to stand aside.
And here we get an early look at how the crank works. No gears! No funny business! Just a nice simple Hall-effect sensor and a ... thing ... enshrouded in white plastic. Important? We'll see.

Step 9

More crank action in a minute, but first: Let's see what powers this pocketable piece of gaming goodness. The hidden side of the board contains:
STMicroelectronics STM32F746IGK6, an ARM Cortex-M7 based SoC
4 GB of Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) THGBMDG5D1LBAIT eMMC NAND flash memory
128 Mb of Winbond W967D6HBG low-power SRAM
32 Mb of Winbond W25Q32JV serial NOR flash memory
Analog Devices (formerly Linear Techology) LTC3576 power management IC
Cirrus Logic CS42L52 audio codec w/ headphone/speaker amplifiers
Espressif Systems ESP32-D0WDQ6 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth SoC

Step 10

This small board is packed full, so let's continue!
STMicroelectronics LIS3DH 3-axis MEMS accelerometer
Allegro Microelectronics A1266 Hall-effect switch
ON Semiconductor FUSB301TMX USB Type-C controller
Rohm BU4216FVE and BU4227FVE 1.6 V and 2.7 V voltage detector
Texas Instruments REG710NA-5 60 mA buck-boost charge pump
Microchip (formerly Micrel) MIC5365-3.3YC5 150 mA / 3.3 V LDO regulator
NXP Semiconductor NTB0104 voltage level translator

Step 11

Time to pull the pin on this crank.
Out it comes. There's a cylindrical magnet embedded in the shaft. As it cranks, the rotating magnetic field hits the aforementioned Hall-effect sensor, which activates ... something, in your game.
One thing this crank won't do? Drift. There's no wiper or spring or sensor surface to wear out. The design is simplicity itself. You might even say there's ... no cranky-panky.
The Hall-effect sensor used here is an Infineon TLV493D-A1B6.
Elsewhere on the front side, the tiny mono speaker is adhered in place. Pretty easy to remove, but would be fussy to rework and replace.

My crank broke. I have the yellow turner and the yellow disc that sits under it but I don't see how it goes back together in the metal arm. It doesn't seem to screw in. It should snap in?

Mark Wasiel -

Seconded. I’d love to see a tear down on the actual crank arm as well.

HAL -

can anyone ID the speaker?

Evan Benn -

Step 12

Here's where our disassembly efforts get gummed up.
The display—rumored to be a Sharp Memory LCD—seems firmly glued to the front half of the plastic enclosure. If you need to replace your display, you'll probably need a whole new plastic face—we were not confident we could separate the screen without destroying it. Probably not expensive, but not ideal.
Meanwhile, the buttons and other various I/O live on this sprawling flexible printed circuit, which is glued to the midframe. We started to un-glue it before realizing this wasn't a good, or reversible, idea.
One huge bright spot, though, is this 100% modular headphone jack. Is that considered retro now? Whatever the case, we're big fans.
A Knowles SPH1642HT5H-1 MEMS microphone can be found near the headphone jack, too!

The Sharp Memory LCD link here now goes to a dodgy website.

jameswilddev -

Memory LCD - Sharp (sharpdevices.com)

zar athustra -

Step 13

Does it go back together and still work? Indeed it does. That's a good sign. Stay tuned for a video with proof of life, and then we'll tear it down all over again.
Our repairability scoring model isn't well-calibrated for the Playdate (although we'll give it a go). It exists in a category all its own, and, like the device itself, we dug in mostly for fun.
As you can likely tell, however, getting inside and getting some parts out isn't too painful.
Speaking of parts: Panic developed this little gadget in collaboration with Teenage Engineering. Hey, we know them!

Step 14

The Playdate earns a 6 out of 10 on our repairability scale (10 is the easiest to repair):
A big flathead screwdriver and an opening pick will get you inside.
You can twirl away all the internal (Pozidriv) screws with a basic Phillips driver.
The battery is immediately accessible and only lightly adhered in place.
The headphone jack is completely modular, and the crank design is simple and serviceable.
You can swap the display, but only if you replace the entire front case.
All of the controls are aggregated onto a single FPC—easy to swap, but a bit wasteful if only one thing breaks.
The USB-C port is soldered to the main board.

Author

Jeff Suovanen

Member since: 06/08/13

406808 Reputation

20 comments

Wonderful teardown! I think the modding community is going to have a great time with this one!

David Parrino -

The Screen (which by the way it may be Sharp LS027B7DH01 or LS027B7DH01A) looks very identical to Adafruit 4694 (SHARP Memory Display Breakout https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694) so aside from being glued, Screen replacement may be possible

Aleksander Kraus - 24/08/21

I am pretty curious whether if the display is already cracked (from a drop), that it would be acceptable to just put the front part in hot water to soften the glue, and just rip out the cracked display. The only reason I’d swap out is if the display was already broken.

I can re-glue a new display, perhaps?

Mark Rejhon -

It would be pretty hard to crack the display since the bezels on these devices are immense, compared to modern cellphones.

Also, the outside screen with round edges are probably plastic (maybe glass) and are separate from the actual display, so the actual display is even less likely to break.

However, the outside screen, if glass, may be stubbornly glued in place. But again, I didn’t buy and took apart one of these yet.

But yes, if your display is cracked then I’m sure you can replace one yourself.

Xavier Jiang - 30/08/21

I managed to damage my display but it did not crack. The device slipped right out of my hand and slammed face down on hard tile floor. The display has a flicker and discoloring issue now. Panic Support has not reached back to me so I am going to attempt to take matters into my own hands.

I am going to attempt to remove the defective display and replace it with the display linked here https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694

Anyone had any luck with this? I’m only worried about removing the defective screen from the plastic case since it is apparently glued down. Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Steven Harrison -

Seems like the connector on the display is mostly identical, and so perhaps a display swap is a doable process.

Xavier Jiang -

I’m at a loss to understand how the USB-C connector could be better by not being soldered.

Soldering is easy to repair, right ?

What do you want, a screw-terminal connector ?

Adrian Godwin -

For it to be on a separate board, so you can replace the damage prone connector without rework on the mainboard

Tomas Donovic -

If a USB-C port gets really damaged, damage to the main board can also occur. This may not be repairable.

Charlie Nancarrow -

These small things are almost impossible to repair with a generic soldering iron (station, temperature controlled or alike) and is more than a challenge with hot air guns (which may overheat the board) especially if it is half-smt and half thru-hole “hybrid” mounting kind.

But given the 4GB of storage, it’s unlikely one need to frequently plug and unplug the device to flash software. But again, charging will be frequent, and the USB-C, while being stronger than both USB-Micro-B and USB-Mini-B, is still far from being indestructible.

A row of pin headers, especially male ones, are practically indestructible (aside from being bent), and allows freedom of connections.

Xavier Jiang - 30/08/21

@cdr_xavier in what world is USB-C “stronger” than USB-Micro-B and USB-Mini-B?

logically: USB-C packs far more and far smaller pins into a smaller surface than older USB variants. These simply cannot be made as robust as a result.

empirically: over many years of use I never saw a USB-B connector fail, not once. USB-C? I’ve blown through dozens of cables due to failed connectors over the the covid period alone. so has my wife. so have my co-workers. there are reasons to like USB-C but robustness simply is not one of them - it’s the first significantly fragile USB connector since USB was first deployed.

Jared Eldredge -

The reason USB-C is more "stronger” is not because it have more pins. It is because the external “metal housing” is made larger, more thick, and more strong than either micro USB A/B or mini USB A/B.

Yes, good micro USB ports are very tough, but a good C is even tougher. At least, on the PCB side.

Realistically, a stress test probably end up with both connectors snapping the cables right away. But that’s okay, because cables are replaceable. Ports are not.

Xavier Jiang - 01/10/21

In step 11 you mention that the crank stimulates the aforementioned hall-effect sensor from step 10, however the hall-effect switch from step 10 appears to be a different part? It seems like the hall-effect switch circled in orange might be for detecting stowage of the crank in the body, whereas there is a separate 3D hall-effect sensor for actual crank rotation. I wonder where that is on the PCB? Anyways, phenomenal tear down, it was very entertaining!

Jordi Pakey-Rodriguez -

Hall effect sensor for the crank is located right here!

Jeff Suovanen -

So, not a repair question, but one asking about the capabilities of the Hall sensor. I'm noodling with some game ideas.

Do people here expect it to provide a reliable position reading? No need to calibrate it occasionally, etc.

I'm wondering if it will be precise enough for something like using the four cardinal directions for settings.

Also, does the Playdate know if the crank is furled or not?

Will Capellaro -

how do I get one they look very cool and do they have other colors

Sqwerks -

Fretting about a USB connector being soldered to a board shows that iFixit doesn't know anything about mechanical engineering or PCB design. They always make these pronouncements about what they'd like to see in a perfect world, but that are never grounded in reality.

MojoFix -

In fairness, modular connectors beat non-modular connectors (in terms of repairability, at least)

Even though the connectors last really long

The problem is more with modern connectors like USB-C, MicroUSB/miniUSB or even USB-A where the socket contain parts that can easily wear out (compared to, say, VGA, RS232 or Parallel, or even RJ45 where the sockets are much more robust)

Which is fair, since USB is never a industrial standard (compared to the ones mentioned). They never require a locking mechanism, and are built to be more convenient. Broken HDMI and DisplayPort due to cable sag comes to mind.

Xavier Jiang - 12/04/22

what is the voltage rating for charging through the screws?

Dylan Sacco -

My playdate screen has broken, I wonder if I can replace it by buying the recommended screen https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694. Does anyone know if there would be any issues with to screen not functioning correctly if I'm able to get the original broken screen unglued and replace it with the adafruit sharp memory display?

B K -