T-Mobile's 3.1AMP Micro USB Car Charger has a sleek design that fits well into almost any cigarette lighter outlet and can power up to two micro USB devices.

The adapter has a rating of 5V/3.1A and comes in several colors

The charger includes:

Micro USB adapter

USB adapter for secondary device

LED to indicate status of charge

Convenient curly cord to conserve space

Generally, car chargers are replaced instead of being repaired because of their low cost.

Because of this, it seems T-Mobile has made this charger particularly difficult to disassemble, given that there are no obvious points of entry

In order to pierce this seemingly impenetrable shell, we will need to reach for our plastic opening tool.

Pry the lid off the top of the charger with the plastic opening tool.

With the lid removed, we can now see a bit of the circuitry including:

USB port

LED light

a lone resistor

Separating the top cover from the bottom cover takes two steps:

There are two wires connecting the curly cord to the charger, so we need to cut these wires with the flush wire cutters to keep them neat and reusable.

Next we can see that there are two tabs keeping the red plastic cover connected to the black plastic cover. In order to separate these two we need to use two plastic opening tools in tandem with a little bit of force. As stated earlier, T-Mobile did not design these chargers to be easily repaired.

With the red plastic cover removed, we now need to remove the black plastic cover.

Remember earlier that this device was not built with future repair in mind, and this cover is proof of that.

In order to remove it, we'll need to use the vice grips to squeeze the cover until the tabs click and disconnect.

Simply pry the cover apart once the tabs are disconnected.

Once the black cover comes apart, there will be six parts:

Front and back of the cover

Front contact that connects with the positive end of the cigarette lighter

Two side contacts that connect with the negative end of the cigarette lighter

Circuit board with wire and spring

Now we are in the meat and potatoes of this device, the circuit board.

Surprisingly, the ONLY chip on the board is:

Active-Semi ACT4533B DC/DC Converter

This CLA was implemented with a relatively simple design using very few parts, including:

Several resistors, capacitors

Two diodes

Fuse

and one inductor

T-Mobile 3.1AMP Universal USB Charger Repairability Score: 1 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)

Plastic cover was very difficult to remove.

Wires needed to be cut in order to disassemble (needs to be resoldered to put back together).

Contacts are difficult to keep in alignment during rebuilding.

It's clear that T-Mobile did not intend for these devices to be repaired, rather they are intended to simply be replaced.