Hello,
I'm trying to repair a cheap Chinese tablet that, at this point, fixing it became a matter of principle
The original symptom was that the battery seemed to be dead and wouldn't charge when connected to power via USB cable.
I opened up the tablet and the battery measured a 0V flat. I swapped it out with another cell I had on hand and the tablet booted up and charged (albeit was very warm).
After I disconnected it from power, it survived for about 20 minutes and then died again. The battery was depleted ~2.6V. I buzzed out both battery terminals and they were shorted.
A closer inspection revealed some SOT-32-5 IC had blew up (see attached image). As can be seen, any marking that was on the IC is now long gone so I don't know what to replace it with.
At first I thought it was the Li-Po charger (e.g. MCP73831T) but it doesn't seem to fit the traces, which are also attached.
The PCB is marked as: AL-MT83XX-706M-V1.0
And also with: EQ-2017.06.15
I've tried to search online for images of this PCB but only found other revisions (V1.1 and V1.2, thought they have earlier date stamps) and don't seem to have this IC near the battery connections.
Does anyone have any idea what this IC might be and/or what I can replace it with?
Thanks in advance!