About that little candle war here (because such a low and pathetic thing can't be even called flamewar) - guys, please, learn to use PM's. dr_frost already asked to stop fighting here, but even if he wouldn't - do You REALLY think that anyone except You want to go through this sh*t?

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As for destructive vs non-destructive, soldering when done carefully, with overall brain usage and/or direct cooling battery itself with bag of crushed ice (or whatever cold) should be pretty straightforward. Of course, If you don't feel comfortable with soldering iron overall, it's better to use soldering wire - but i wonder if resistance due to risk of bad contact isn't real threat here. Of course, battery itself also isn't soldered to N900 pins , so it's no problem if You're REALLY sure that soldering wire connect battery terminals very thigh, even when You shake phone, etc.

Side note - if you got only low-power electrical soldering iron (~30 W) using bad of ice around battery may cool everything, including flat cable You want to solder, too much. I use butan powered handheld soldering device, so I was able to finally solder cable to battery surface itself (on one of my batteries, flat wires just crushed and fall apart) doing it in "ice cloak", but for normal purposes better idea may be to "form" cable into flat connector, then tape it to battery using very elastic isolating tape. If You do it right, pulling tape very hard during "circles" around battery, your "connector" will stick so hard to battery surface, that it won't move even during heavy shaking. Also tested this - using proper layers of isolating, You can not only "connect" cable to battery "+" (which is literally 99% of battery metal case surface), but also to small part that is "-". But if that is the case, do it REALLY careful - you must be 100% sure that You covered all "+" surface with isolating tape, leaving exposed only small part (~ millimeter) of "-".

Accomplished this with my 1st li-ion "toy battery" and works like a charm - even when connectors are not soldered, just "sticked" to surface, resistance is about 0,1 ohm.

Anyway, I'm still waiting to see how disassembling of SCUD went wrong. Just curious.