Skip to main content

Unknown parent

Sarah Brown
@Michael Vogel @fne8w2ah This always seems to come up in response, but googling for “burned out lightning connector” or similar always yields a lot of results. It’s a very widespread problem.
Unknown parent

Sarah Brown

@Hank G ☑️ @fne8w2ah It appears to be due to a combination of spark erosion of the centre pin, as lightning is prone to, ironically, arcing on connection and disconnection, as well as electrolysis over time, with the pin eroding and electroplating the connector inside the phone.

The first problem can be rectified by never hot plugging, but if you live in a humid climate, there’s nothing you can do about the second.

Indeed, while the ports last longer than the cables, they eventually fail from being coated with all that crap. Before I switched almost entirely to inductive charging and wireless CarPlay, an iPhone’s lightning port for me rarely made it to two years before dying.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@fne8w2ah
I loved magsafe for the first couple years I used it; then I started to see them fraying & breaking at the connector. It was almost the rule. (I ordered power bricks for Macs for an ad agency for about 8 years, so I saw this a lot.)

Mind you *mine* never went out, so I think this was a user behavior thing, but I would say they were poorly designed for the behavior of most of my users.

in reply to FeralRobots

@fne8w2ah
Thinking back on this & remembering that at some point Apple redesigned the connector to address this & it...didn't get any better. I.e., they misidentified the cause, which I now think was probably more to do with the materials used in the cable wrapping & "boot" than in the angles or stresses. So, maybe not engineering so much as materials.
in reply to FeralRobots

@FeralRobots @fne8w2ah Talking about the laptop version rather than the inductive charging one? MagSafe 3 seems much more robust.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@heluecht @fne8w2ah It must be VERY climate specific or people specific. I’ve never had one fail from the connector. Ever. Occasionally they start to wear at the rear of the plug and a bit of sugru fixes that. I’ve cut up and thrown usb a/b cables and usb c cables but never a lightning cable. And all the connectors in all the phones I’ve and still work too!
Unknown parent

Cyberspice
@heluecht @fne8w2ah I agree. USB-C is mechanically more fragile!
in reply to Cyberspice

@heluecht @fne8w2ah Having said all that people seem to break the screens on their phones and I’ve never done that ever either. And I don’t exactly treat them with kid gloves.
Unknown parent

Sarah Brown
@Hank G ☑️ @fne8w2ah Quite probably. Do you make a habit of hot plugging them?
in reply to Cyberspice

@Cyberspice @Michael Vogel @fne8w2ah I've never had one last more than a couple of months regular use.

Record is 8 hours from brand new to dead.

Unknown parent

Raroun
@Michael Vogel @Sarah Brown
I am an Apple user since day 1.
The Lightning connector is the worst.
The cables are breaking in around 3-6 months (apple original).
3rd party cable are far more reliable.
But the worst is, that lightning ports gets clogged with dust.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@heluecht @fne8w2ah I have a draw full of good ones because every new gadget came with one and the only time I went for a new one was switch from one with a USB-A connector to one with a USB-C connector due to a new Mac.
in reply to Cyberspice

@heluecht @fne8w2ah When the fail for me they fail like this. This one is from the car and kept being trod on. Even this hasn’t fully failed.
in reply to Sarah Brown

@fne8w2ah For what it's worth, I find USB-C stuff to be pretty disposable as well. Probably less so than Lightning
in reply to Cyberspice

@heluecht @fne8w2ah A minute using the same process I use to clean up connectors on retro computers and you get this. They are gold plated contacts.
in reply to Cyberspice

@Cyberspice @Michael Vogel @fne8w2ah Can just see it starting to rub through to the circuit board in a spot.

That’s about a fortnight use for one of mine.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@fne8w2ah #Apples #Lightning Connector was shit from day 1 and had 0 reasons to exist - unlike the original #DockConnector, but even then the #iPod could've used #MiniUSB or #MicroUSB + #AV-Chinch and #MHL to do Audio & Video.

#MagSafe is also another #proprietary #SingleVendor solution when #Qi+ existed for over a decade.

in reply to Sarah Brown

@heluecht @fne8w2ah Its not though. I looked at it with a loup. what do you do with it in 2 weeks?