I just took apart my i1000 to see if i could find and fix a rattle that was causing all audio to be distorted. i noticed that the speaker was only held in place with what looked like a piece of masking tape, so that's one rattle i can easily fix (i planned to remove the speaker anyway since i hate the startup and shutdown noises).
when i went to remove the battery, i was surprised. it looked a little swollen, but that's not unusual for these "battery in a bag" types... except when i touched it to remove it, i found that it was swollen with AIR - it's like a balloon! i can press on it and the "bag" easily moves around like a ziploc bag that's half full of air. i can feel the solid battery inside and it still feels flat, but i've never seen one where it swelled up with air.
is this swollen battery cause for concern?
while i was in there, i noticed that there's a little metal tang in the bottom half of the chassis that's meant to grab some notches on the chrome wheel next to the lens, to provide detents as you rotate the lens. mine has never had any clicks while rotating the lens. so i took out the metal piece, changed the shape of it so it would stick out more, and now my camera has nice clicks while rotating the lens, to help keep it from rotating away from where you set it, a lot like my wife's a118. so now i've improved my camera by removing the speaker and adding detents/clicks to the lens rotation.
one last thing - are they counting on the gap around the REC and MIC buttons to be enough opening for the microphone? there's no opening in front of the mic, though there is a depression in the case so the mic won't hit the case... i'm thinking of drilling a hole below the rec/mic buttons so that the front of the mic is actually exposed, as well as making sure the mic can't vibrate against the chassis. has anyone else done this?