That sounds horrible. These connectors probably break after the fifth time of plugging them in. Apple’s idea with Lightning wasn’t that bad I guess. But then they were to stubborn and it took them years to put USB C in their phones.
Still, is it the plug, or the socket that breaks? I’ve been holding for a long time that using sockets with tiny plastic tongues to hold the conductors, is a bat shit crazy move in consumer electronics, where a cable is prone to getting a lateral tug that rips the whole thing apart.
This includes some old Samsung connectors, all of modern Nokias, mini-USB, micro-USB, and even USB-C.
Old Nokias and Ericssons had the right idea: pogo/flex pins on the connector, and just a bunch of plates on the socket, so the cable would break but the socket was rock solid.
Mini USB has to be one of the most robust connectors I’ve used tbh. All my original cables from over a decade ago still work flawlessly, as well as the ports on the devices housing them.
As for Micro USB… not great. I hope USB-C is more durable, so far I haven’t had any issues with ports going bad that wasn’t down to some ultra cheap adapter or cable
I’ve had plenty of Mini-USB failures, all of them in the socket. There’s a reason why when Micro-USB was designed, they bumped the required mating cycle rating to twice that of Mini-USB.
The biggest problem with Micro-USB, is that it got adopted as the standard charging port for smartphones, which proved even the doubled mating cycle rating way insufficient.
For reference:
USB-A, USB-B: 1500 cycles (but they tend to stay put)
Mini-USB: 5000 cycles (good for sporadic data transfers, and once or twice a day charging)
Micro-USB, USB-C: 10000 cycles (better for daily charging, not so much for many times a day)
Magnetic adapter, Wireless: until it burns out, but not so standard.
If you had problems with Micro-USB, expect about the same to happen with USB-C. Plugging it once a day to charge, should last 30 years; plugging it 10 times a day to “top it up”, will break it after 3 years on average.
Personally, I’ve put some magnetic adapters in all Micro-USB stuff like 5-6 years ago, and so far only one of the adapters has broken, all sockets are like new.
Magsafe is a really great idea, it’s just a shame Apple came up with it first and I can’t wait for it to be the universal standard for all types of external connectors forevermore. It’s as close as we can get to wireless without being wireless.
Interestingly, Apple has donated the phone version of MagSafe to the Qi open wireless charging standard. Soon we’ll see a magnetically aligning wireless charging Qi2 devices from other manufacturers.
Add comment