Well, that was easier than I thought it would be. I’ve got a whole lot more respect for the Apple hardware designers. The metal back of the case isn’t epoxied or glued in place, even though it feels completely solid. There are some locking mechanisms between the edge of the metal and the plastic front of the case, and it just pops off with the special tool (and pops back on with some gentle pressure). Very cool design.
The whole process took 20 minutes. 10 minutes of that were spent gently working the back of the iPod case off. I could have done that in maybe 2 minutes, once I’d figured out the trick to it.
The actual battery replacement was completely trivial. No screws, no pins or anything. Just slide the hard drive out, flip the rubber vibration flap out of the way and unplug the old battery. Slap in the new one, and slide everything back into place. Pop the case on and charge it up. The only “hard” part (after getting the case off) was getting the wires that connect the battery to tuck in out of the way - that took maybe 15 seconds of gentle prodding using the supplied case-removal tool.
I took some photos of the process, to show that the ones found online aren’t too staged.
I haven’t done any battery performance tests yet, but the replacement process was both quick and easy. I was pretty sure I would either bork or scuff my iPod. I was half joking that I’d be ordering a new iPod today - but I’ll have to hold off for awhile now… I’ll write up a review of the battery once I’ve got an idea about how it performs - but it will be performing about 15,000% better than what the stock battery had degraded to 
Thanks to FastMac for the battery!
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Great pics on changing out the battery. I too replaced my batter about 2 months ago and I get better performance than when I first got it. Getting the case off and working around that cable is the toughest thing to do but the overall process took less than 15 minutes (now I could do it in a matter of a few minutes). I was getting about a little over 4 hours on my old battery but now I can go 8 hours at work along with my long drive to work and still have battery power left over.
Yeah - my iPod is very highly used (and still in mint condition), so I was really upset to be getting an hour of life on a charge (on a good day). Now, it’s performing much better than it did when it was new! It’s been running all day (4 hours so far) and the battery has only gone down one bar so far! Before the upgrade, I’d have to plug it in to resurrect it after the morning commute…
I did mine a while ago too. Its true that getting the knack of splitting the cover and the back is the hard part, I too was joking with my workmates about ordering a new iPod as I got increasingly more irritated with it.
Once open it was a doodle though, well apart from not plugging the battery in properly so I had to take it apart again
21 hours I heard with the new battery, Im not sure about that, but its certainly handled a few days without being charged (not on permanently of course).
[...] Or, you can replace it yourself. D’Arcy Norman recently replaced his iPod’s battery and took some pictures along the way. Well, that was easier than I thought it would be. I’ve got a whole lot more respect for the Apple hardware designers. The metal back of the case isn’t epoxied or glued in place, even though it feels completely solid. [...]
[...] I got a new TruePower battery for my 2.5 year old 3G iPod last week. It took a grand total of 20 minutes to install, and after charging the battery, my iPod is performing better than it did the day I bought it. [...]
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