Ella’s above-referenced portable power bank, example shown below and likely specifications here, stopped taking a charging and giving a charge to other devices. It was a freebie from her Humane Society volunteer efforts. Since it was broken and never seemed to have a manufacturer warranty, I found it free game to open up and inspect. I started a guide for others considering opening one of these, which is rather easy. Anyway, please help improve the guide. As usual I didn’t take enough pictures and didn’t write enough describing what I did to repair it.

The battery cells inside the power bank appear to be fine, but the USB input and output ports had cracked solder joints at the PCB. No matter how I resoldered the ports, they appear destined to incur more stress than the PCB is designed for. I sealed it back up, but I suspect I’ll be back inside this thing before long. The output port seems most durable, but the input port flexes way too much.