The same thing keeps breaking on my iPhones — and I've finally embraced a new solution

[admin]

Our managing editor for mobile is fed up with the charging port on his iPhone failing. Fortunately, wireless charging and MagSafe charging stands can bail out an iPhone with a bum port.

The same thing keeps breaking on my iPhones — and I've finally embraced a new solution : Read more

 

[Zigzag12]

My friends have had the same problem. The majority of the time it was lint collected in the bottom of the port. A hand lens and a good light will tell all. You can clean it up with a flat tooth pick. If you are more adventurous you can smash a cotton swab and dampen with isopropyl alcohol and clean out the rest of the gunk. The minority of the time was a simply a bad cable. Your illustration for this article seems to show USB-C ports on a newer phone?

 

[michaelormsby]

The thing to notice w/ lightning is that even though the cable side has two surfaces the device side has only one set of pins, usually on the downwards direction. Over time (like years) the plastic port stretches microscopically so the plug doesn’t fit in as snug of a fashion. I had some luck on a very old iPad using a paper shim to remedy this. Eventually I got tired of fitting the shim so I very carefully coated the upper surface of the port w a tiny, tiny amount of epoxy. Obviously only do this as a last resort on a device that you can afford to lose.

The other way would be to buy a lightning to USB-C adapter and use a shim to get a tight fit and leave it in the device.