Dingoonity.org

Seems like it may be useful to someone if they want to know what this entails. 
Its not hard to do but there always is the risk of something going wrong so do it at your own risk though.
First you needs the pads which for whatever reason are sold separately and in packs of 5 each, maybe the other 8 will make good shruiken or something.
http://www.geekbuying.com/item/Original-GPD-WIN-GPD-XD-D-Pad-Silicone-Pads-375593.html
http://www.geekbuying.com/item/Original-GPD-Win-Silicone-Pads-for-ABXY-Keys-375592.html


Need some sort of clean area to work on it, preferably somewhere you can ground yourself to avoid the small possibility of damaging something and with enough space to take it apart with a small cup or something to hold hardware.
Obviously you start out with the 6 screws in the case.

No need for tools here, you can pry it apart with your fingernails, go all around and pop it apart, remove your sd card before this, it'll catch when removing the shell if its still installed.

Careful here because it is fairly easy to damage the fan switch ribbon cable if you aren't careful, remove that and the battery cable and get the bottom shell out of the way.

Take all the screws out of the motherboard minus the 2 fan screws, remove the antenna cables from the chip and make sure the antenna wire is removed from the metal brackets, I can tell you from experience they will tear if you don't.
To note those two screws in the middle above the label, make sure those are fully tight when reinstalling, they leave impressions on the battery as it is and if they stick out any they will dig into the battery which is very bad.



You should be able to lift the motherboard out of the case, if it doesn't budge you probably missed a screw, yes the rubber shells on the sticks will catch going through, don't worry about that and just pop them through.
Make sure they don't flop around on the ribbon cable either, those can get damaged somewhat easily.


Flip it over and you'll find what you came for.


Remove those and install the new pads making sure they are installed on the posts.
Now put everything back together in the opposite order and voila!
Farewell mushy buttons and hello crisp clickyness.

Thanks! But are the new one better and more accurate?

I'll find that out once I receive them.
Everyone who bought a Rev 1 from me can get these for free (and even replaced for free when you ship your device to me).

Unfortunately, GPD didn't ship my order before they went off to Chinese New Year holidays.
They received the order and payment a week before holidays started in order to be able to ship everything before that... but sadly, it seems they didn't care.

So the new version, more GPD XDs and the silicon mats have to wait until they return

I finally received my units - and I can confirm that the difference in the DPad and keyboard is minimal (if you can feel it at all).

If no one would've told me, I would've sworn they are exactly the same on the old and new version.
And even knowing them I'm not sure I can FEEL a difference or whether that's just my imagination (as I KNOW it should be different).

So basically, the only difference between the old and new version is the case (it gets less fingerprints) as well as slower storage in the new version.
Well, and that it comes preinstalled with the latest firmware version.

The rest is exactly the same. That was a big hype around nothing

Sounds like its not worth getting the newer version. Is that the same firmware version as we can download from your site or even a newer one? Thanks.

Well, not if you have the old one. I dislike devices that collect fingerprints, so the shell is nicer in my opinion.
The rest is basically the same.

Not sure what firmware version it is, but I doubt it's different than the one released for the old one.
As far as I know, the hardware hasn't changed (except for the storage).

Quote from: EvilDragon on February 07, 2017, 12:45:28 pm

I finally received my units - and I can confirm that the difference in the DPad and keyboard is minimal (if you can feel it at all).

If no one would've told me, I would've sworn they are exactly the same on the old and new version.
And even knowing them I'm not sure I can FEEL a difference or whether that's just my imagination (as I KNOW it should be different).

So basically, the only difference between the old and new version is the case (it gets less fingerprints) as well as slower storage in the new version.
Well, and that it comes preinstalled with the latest firmware version.

The rest is exactly the same. That was a big hype around nothing

This is interesting -- I had the exact opposite experience.  My first (faulty launch) model had really spongy/mushy buttons and d-pad with no tactile beginning/end of motion and little spring on the return -- it was nearly impossible to use the d-pad for any precision motion, and the mushiness of the buttons made it difficult to know whether they were depressed.  The lack of spring on the response made quick button presses almost impossible because the return was so sluggish. 

The replacement (new version) device I got has extremely tactile and clean press/depress with notably improved spring on the return.  I found the initial version to be almost unusable because of how bad it was, but the updated model is so improved that it feels (to me) like an entirely different controller, and is far more usable.  It's not perfect -- a PS3 controller will still beat it for button feel and d-pad feel, but I really did feel that the initial model was so bad that I didn't want to use it.

Sorry you didn't see the same improvement

Maybe you had a bad unit, personally I don't have this feeling on mine.

The several possibility that comes to mind is that:
A: the pad was not fully centered and the nub rebounding pushing the button up put a tiny offset load on it.
B: they did minor changes on the fly as production went along so there is less of a difference between newer old pads and ones from way back.
C: minor variations in manufacturing due to rushing and whatnot that could have lead to some pads being a tad subpar compared to the rest.
D: a mix of B and C.
E: Some degree of confirmation bias in effect here.
Or F: I am actually insane and none of you exist except as voices in my head.

Either way the pads do behave differently when pressed so there is some difference no matter how small, I just can pinpoint it.
I'm tempted to try to build some sort of test stand but I really don't have time for that.

BTW @EvilDragon when you get the mats I'd be interested if you could read a couple of numbers off them just out of curiosity.
Each one has a tiny number on them and I've got two D-pads that say 34, one that says 2 and the rest are in between.
Presumably they are lot numbers but I'm just curious what a couple random ones in your incoming package are.