Time to clean the lint out of the charging port
The charging port is the bellybutton of the device
deleted by creator
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.
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
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.
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.
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
You’d be surprised how caked a charge port can be, you know you’ve cleaned it correctly when the plug goes in all the way and doesn’t stick out a bit.
When it still doesn’t connect correctly and/or you feel play in de cable/chargeport, it might just need replacing.
How do you clean the port?
Take a toothpicks and carefully break it in two halves. Ideally you are left with something about half as wide as the original pick. You want thin and sturdy pieces to get into the port. Now carefully scrape the lint and dirt out of the port. The dirt tends to compact on the bottom, so you have to scrape a bit to get it all out. I would recommend to do it in direct sunlight to better see the interior of the port. Torchlights usually are either to bright on the spot or to dim.
Works like a charm.
That’s the beauty of the Fairphone https://shop.fairphone.com/shop/fairphone-4-usb-c-port-25
As long as the parts are available.
Haven’t needed them myself, but I’ve heard stories where they couldn’t get a replacement part because it was sold out for a long time. Which kind of defeats the purpose.
Still, it is such a robust phone.
Now if only the hardware wasn’t subpar and the OS unusable…
For me it works perfectly fine. I don’t need a super computer in my pocket
How is the OS unusable when you can always install a custom rom?
Fairphone even encourages it.
Ugggg I was so close to pulling to trigger for one on my last phone death. But I was doing all this comparison and pricing, and at the end of it all, realized they arent sold in my shithole country and had like a extra 200 hundy shipping price. So im still android and the ogle. But next time… pretty sure itll be fairphone.
By the way, any users of the Mint mobile service who have a fairphone who see this comment, please respond to me. Im still only like 90 percent sure I use one with that plan.
Rip.
Good luck buying a new one with all of * gestures at everything * this going on.
I just started buying cheap xiaomi phones. Mine cost 120€ and it can do everything I want it to do.
Wireless chargers
Say what you want about Apple, but MagSafe is amazing.
You mean Apple’s copy of the open source standard Qi charging?
Qi is worthless to me without the magnets. Apple gave WPC the magnets for Qi2.
Same, but with my laptop. 😔
This happened to me a few times but it turned out it was actually the charging cable.
I had crinked the cable enough times trying to charge things at weird angles.
Oh. I’ll have to get that checked at some point.
I just checked it by trying the cable on other devices, and didn’t cables set the phone
Ah, gotcha.
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
The cable is designed to break before the port.
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 had one phone where it was the port, but I’m pretty sure it was water damage. It took one too many falls into puddles while fumbling with kids, carrying stuff and opening doors all at once
In my case it was actually the port, well not really the port, but a lot of pocket dust had gotten into the port. I spend some time with a toothpick to clean everything out and it was fixed. When you think you got it all there is probably more.
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.
Try with a different/new cable.
The contacts on a USB-C cable can become fatigued and lose the tension needed to maintain a solid connection, which can cause this issue.
Most of the time its because you use your phone too much when its charging, never happens to my phones cause i leave em alone to charge.
Mine started the same thing a few weeks ago. I tried cleaning out the charging port but after a while of scrapinc I gave up since nothing was coming out and I couldn’t see any more lint in there. The problem persists. I am confident that no one in the world has it as difficult as me right now.
i am also convinced that no one in the world has it as difficult as you. sending condolences.
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.
I have yet to have a USB c port be ripped out of a device, I have had this happen to two USB micro b devices (ultra cheap). (USB c cords die relatively frequently though)
Remember when the little chip that held the pins in the middle would get obliterated?
One time my headphone stopped working without weird angle thing.
Out of nowhere. Just stopped working.It was perfect with good quality sound befire but no “only one ear” or “certain angle” or “bad quality sound” nope.
I didn’t have my guard up and paid dearly for it.
I got some magnetic detachable usb cables and the end that detaches never gets unplugged from my phone. Although i mostly charge mine with a wireless pad on my nightstand.
Great time to try wireless charging if you have a device that supports it.
- Test the cable first if you have a spare.
- Test the AC adapter if you have a spare.
- If both fail, inspect the charging port with a flashlight. 4a) If it looks dirty, try cleaning it out with a toothpick (if you have a dedicated plastic tool for mobile repair, use that). 4b) If it doesn’t look dirty, refer to 4a. What often happens is that lint from your pocket compacts over time as it gets in there and then gets pressed in by the charger.
- If this doesn’t work and you have a good, locally owned mobile repair shop nearby, they might look at the port for free just to see if there’s anything you missed.
Only after all of this would I start to strongly consider the phone itself as the culprit.
