Yea, I bought one of the induction chargers cause this happened to me about a year ago. My phone still works so i see no reason to buy a new one and quite frankly i just don’t want to. Gonna ride this bad boy out until it dies.
I had the same thing.
Turns out the charger was too weak. Getting a 2A (Ampere) charger fixed it.
Every time I’ve had that happen, it’s been the cable going bad, not the port.
Or the port is just full of pocket lint
i literally just finished a usb-c charging port repair on a relative’s phone.
The plastic “tongue” inside the port was gone, and the metal pins normally embedded in it were standing in empty air.
You can break it if you really want to :)
I was happy when usb c came out because it looked like it had to be a significant improvement over micro usb, in terms of longevity and reliability.
It’s looking like it’s only a slight improvement though, which sucks.
Idk what cables and devices youve been buying but ive seen an insane difference in durability going to micro to c.
For a start, none of my usb c cables have lost their gripping strength, one of which ive been using daily for over 6 years.
None of my usb c devices have had the central pin blade thing fall off or fatige to the point of not making a connection,
The one down side ive seen to usb c is that when i accidentally rolled my chsir over a connector, it did crush the oval inwards but i pried that open again and stuck it in my desk mic and its been working fine since.
Time to clean the lint out of the charging port
The charging port is the bellybutton of the device
charge is stored in the battery
Years ago when fixing phones most of the charging problems was just that. Most of the ear speaker issues were from makeup getting caked up in the mesh screen. And most of the motherboard issues came from people dropping them in the toilet/lake/ocean.
I have a friend who dropped his phone into a porta potty at a festival and then fished it out. Apparently he was drunk enough that he forgot about doing it and woke up in the morning wondering why his phone stank.
There is no point to this story
A teenage boy is getting ready to take his girlfriend to the prom. First he goes to rent a tux, but there’s a long tux line at the shop and it takes forever.
Next, he has to get some flowers, so he heads over to the florist and there’s a huge flower line there. He waits forever but eventually gets the flowers.
Then he heads out to rent a limo. Unfortunately, there’s a large limo line at the rental office, but he’s patient and gets the job done.
Finally, the day of the prom comes. The two are dancing happily and his girlfriend is having a great time. When the song is over, she asks him to get her some punch, so he heads over to the punch table and there’s no punchline.
On the old iPhones if you got lucky you could cut the power on it, pull the logic board out, and we’d stick it in an old jewelry vibrator filled with 99% rubbing alcohol. Hit it with a heat gun right away to disperse any liquid. Once dry id hook it up to a cheap screen and battery I knew was good before sticking it back in the phone, if that came on. Then work your way backwards replacing anything that needed to be replaced out of the other parts, or hook up to a docking cable to a computer to back up to iTunes, so they could get their data. Slowly apple forced everyone into iCloud backups, so the need dropped more and more for such though.
They also interconnected screens, facial cameras, color adjustments and all the other bullshit that’s making fixing these more and more annoying and expensive.
It’s always this unless you can think of a time you specifically damaged the port. And you’ll be surprised how much shit comes out with the tip of a plastic toothpick; how it was somehow actually managing to still charge in the first place lol.
Depends on the port, micro usb used to just wear out over time.
I honestly enjoy it when this happens. It’s so satisfying getting to pull obscenely large wads of lint out of the port
Also a decent idea to snag a magnetic charging adapter to avoid this in the future
Got one that plugs into my phone and a few of the other end for cords around my house and car, totally worth the 15 bucks I spent
My dad had Parkinson’s at the end of his life (and a general lack of coordination his whole life). Those magnetic charging adapters were a lifesaver for him. He just needed to get the cord close enough to the charging port on his phone and it would snap together. No coordination required.
It was also nice when he would forget to disconnect the cord. As soon as he walked away, the cable would pop off. No more broken cables from being yanked out of the phone or the wall.
I have these for all my chargeable things. Bought like 4 packs with multiple port types, so I have tons of extra cables in case some die. They are great for game controllers, phones, tablets, rechargeable keyboards, and all sorts of other shit. All you need is multiple ends, and you can use the same cables for everything. It’s glorious if you have a mix of port types.
what if cleaning doesn’t solve it?
Get a wireless charger if your phone supports it. It will likely be slower, but still work.
it doesn’t
what type of phone? I can gladly give detailed instructions on how to replace it if you want!
it’s my laptop actually, but I’ll just ask my local computer guy it’s okay
Then repeat step 1.
Note: cleaning didn’t work for my kids phone, took it to the store, they cleaned it out and it works since 1 year now.
Huge thanks to people in this thread. USB-C stopped charging reliably on my phone a few months back, tried clearing the port with compressed air but no joy, so I started using wireless charging. Spent 5mins today picking out a surprising amount of lint with a narrow toothpick and it works like new!
Might consider how you’re storing it, too - I used to keep my phone upside-down in my pocket (so the charging port was pointing up), because that angled it so it would be upright when I pulled it out. That also let all the gunk fall in and stay in - seems like it takes a lot longer before this happens now that I pocket it with the port facing down!
it is frankly impressive how much debris a port can hold!
I had that exact same experience a few months ago.
I did the same thing! I thought I was boned, turned out I just had a pocket lint problem. It really was amazing how much shit I pulled out of there. Charges just fine now.
If there is a problem with capacitance then this won’t help, but if it might just be dirty then power it down and clean the charging port with a can of 99.99% compressed alcohol electronics cleaner, then use a can of air duster, repeat a couple of times. Afterwards, press the case firmly to ensure it’s still held together. Leave to dry completely before trying again.
This is why I try to use my wireless charger when I don’t need fast charging, reduces the strain on my charging cable and the USB C port
increases strain on your battery tho
How is it worse on the battery than wired chargers? I’m guessing heat?
yep! it’s just less efficient than wired charging and whatever is lost in the process is turned into heat, which is particularly poor for your battery. batteries are consumables anyways and it seems like most people get it replaced at least once in a phones lifespan, so it doesn’t really matter if you’re ok with that. from my experience fixing phones over the years I can definitely confirm that using wireless charging consistently, particularly if you’re doing anything intensive at the same time, will lower the lifespan of your battery significantly.
I have exclusively charged my phones wirelessly for about a decade. My batteries typically end up healthier than my wife’s over a long period of time.
other factors like usage time, intensity of use, and charging habits also have effects on the lifespan, so it’s hard to compare one person’s experience to a single other persons and draw a conclusion that’s anything other than anecdotal without some very specific controls.
what i do know for certain is that the heat generation from wireless charging has been long studied, and so has the effect of those heats on li ion batteries.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.9b00663
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1002007118307536
I don’t doubt there’s a difference, I just don’t think it’s noticeable.
How, from the heat?
yes! heat is kinda the worst thing you can do to a battery. I’m not a chemist, but I believe the chemical reaction that charges/discharges a lithium ion begins to breaks down when performed in a heated environment, and I can confirm that consistent exposure to heat is how you get the really puffy spicy pillow batteries.
All these legitimately helpful fucking comments and no one’s pointing out that you can easily fix the problem by placing the smartphone in microwave and nuke it for a minute on high* to get your phone up to 80% charge.
*^Charging times dependent on microwave power output and your zodiac sign. Lower wattages may result in tastier special brownies. If unsure, please consult your primary care phrenologist.^
I’ve had that for 2 years. It’s no big.
Im still rocking my galaxy s10+ and it’s had this issue for about 2 years. Otherwise its great. I’m gunna keep hangin on. ✊🏼
Rip.
Good luck buying a new one with all of * gestures at everything * this going on.
Mine started doing it too. Turns out the charging port was full of dust!
Good to know…
They’re absolutely right, that is the cause 85% of the time. Make sure to get a non-conductive pick made out of plastic or wood (e. g. literally a toothpick) and remove the dust by circling around the little protrusion, then clean the rounded corners with a little hooking motion.
USB C? See if it isn’t full of garbage accumulated inside. I had to use a needle to scratch it out. Shit was so dense it was pretty difficult to clean. Eventually (~20 min of intensive scratching), I managed to clean it and I got rid of the problem.
Until I found the problem, I ended up buying bs. Another charger and an inductive charger.
If it makes you feel better, my phone just did the thing where it installed an update and now everything is running noticably worse.
Enforced obsoletion. Android is really good about those updates.
sharp pair of tweezers or a needle or a toothpicks should be able to help. tons of instructions on how to do it in this thread, but I will add my 2 cents as a phone tech and say that if it’s a lightening port, you want to keep your tool as vertically in the middle of the port as possible while scraping horizontally. for USBC, keep your tool as close to the walls as possible while avoiding the center “tab”. this is so you don’t scrape the contacts. if you do that, you will need a port replacement (usually 80-100$ on most devices). once you scrape as much as you can out. you can use an old toothbrush or whatever works to brush the port clean with some isopropyl to clean any dirt on the contacts, which will come off easily now that it’s not being supported but the other debris you cleaned out with the tool.
Why not use plastic or tooth pick and start with alcohol?
whatever works best! it’s just kinda hard to find something plastic that skinny and sharp, and I use tweezers as it’s the most efficient (but also the most prone to damage if you make mistakes I guess).
starting with the brush/isopropyl is not a bad idea for cleaning the contacts (and should be the first thing tried if a device isn’t charging) but it usually doesn’t actually get stuff out of the port. if a port is only charging at a specific angle, it’s cause there’s debris stuck in there. in my experience it’s usually very hard to get with a brush as it’s been compacted and cemented over however long you’ve had the device.
That’s great, thanks for explaining.
