Problems With PSP Pandora Battery

Construction

• There are two options for acquiring a Pandora battery. It may be ordered online. The other option is to create your own. The construction of a Pandora battery requires the drilling of an existing battery and the soldering of additional wires and parts. Only someone familiar with electronics should attempt this or he will risk injuring himself and damaging his PSP's battery.

Legal Issues

• The Pandora battery's main function is to allow the PSP to be modified with custom firmware. What the battery does is to allow the user to bypass locks on the PSP and enter Service Mode. This mode was not meant to be available to gamers, so accessing it will void your PSP's warranty. The use of custom firmware can involve playing homebrew games or downloading and playing PSP games that were not paid for. While the Pandora battery is not illegal, it is used to facilitate these activities.

Continued Use

• Once a PSP battery has become a Pandora battery, there is no switching it back. Your PSP will not be able to function properly with the Pandora battery installed. There are forum reports of gamers who notice that their Pandora battery will not hold a charge. If you transform your battery into a Pandora, you will need to purchase an additional battery to resume standard use of your PSP.

Compatibility

• If you do purchase a Pandora battery, be aware that it is not compatible with all models of the PSP hardware. The PSP Slim model 3000 and above has been altered to prevent the hacking of firmware. This means that when you insert a Pandora battery into the system, the PSP will not boot up. The PSP Go features an internal battery to bypass the use of Pandora altogether. Only users with earlier models of the PSP can use this modified battery.

Warning

• If you are not extremely careful with where you find your Pandora battery as well as the software used when modifying your PSP, you can easily end up bricking your PSP. A bricked PSP is completely unusable and Sony will not repair any PSP that has been tampered with. Your only solution after bricking the PSP is to purchase a new one. The Pandora battery can also cause lasting damage to your PSP, such as damaging the connector used to charge batteries.