I have a good-condition SE that still looks and works great. I’ve opened it to repair a few times in the past but at some...

I did two battery replacements back to back, and on the second I used the black spudger as a spool, basically: # NOT cutting the tabs in 2 (1) laying the spudger across the frame with the edge over the battery's bottom edge and pulling the tabs over it (2) Slowly rolling the spudger towards the home button, keeping the angle of tape more or less vertical from the battery's edge. On side of the tape broke early on because i misunderstood ifixit's directions and was pulling the tape forward at an angle over the home button hardware. I can't say for certain this method would work consistently but I was surprised how well it did- certainly better than pulling and re-gripping separate tabs.

Changing 2 batteries back to back, the tabs broke on me the first time. the second time I:

- did not separate the tabs in the previous step

- laid them on the spudger with the spudger across the body of the phone

-rotated the spudger like a spool, keeping the adhesive feeding more or less straight up.

it worked pretty well. one side came completely off and battery removal was easy.