Step 1: clean out the lint from the charging port
Step 2: make sure you actually got all the lint out and there isn’t any hiding to the side.
The sim ejector pin that used to come with phones can sometimes just barely fit between the center blade and connector housing. Otherwise a paperclip with a slight hook bent into the end can work well.Flosspicks work well to dig out the lint.Also consider getting a wireless charger for nightly charging if your phone supports it.
I prefer a toothpick. Wood won’t scratch the metal or cause a short, but it’s still stiff enough to scrape any lint that’s stuck. And lint sticks a bit to the toothpick, so that helps get it out.
Neither will the plastic of a floss pick. And the floss pick is narrower so there is much less risk of deforming the interior parts of the plug. Also, less risk of splinters.
another good choice
A comment like this one saved me from giving up on my aging phone.
No matter how convinced you are you definitely cleaned it, there still could be a little bit more stuck in there.
The port on my old phone broke entirely but it still had wireless charging so I got three more years out of it. Then the display failed and since phones have switched to USB C I figured it was time to upgrade
time to upgrade
They fucking got ya. That’s like a $30 repair and you just threw it in landfill and gave them another grand or more. Weaksauce.
Given that the phone didn’t have USB-C that most likely means it was from like 2016, so it’s fair to say that it’s time to upgrade. Phones have gotten so much better since then, especially the cameras.
If the connector hadn’t changed I probably would have gotten it repaired. But since there’s not aftermarket port swaps I figured I should bite the bullet.
Maybe by 2032 I’ll be ready for a new one again.
Ouch. Why don’t you remind them that their dog is dead as well. Really lay into them.
Wireless charging WILL wear out your battery faster.
For longevity, use a slow wired charger. This will put the least thermal strain on the battery.
I’ve charged my Pixel 6 wirelessly every night for 3 years and had zero battery loss. Simply not true.
Then you are truly, talking out your ass.
Within the first year, even with slow wired daily charging, the battery would have lost at least a few percentages of capacity. By year three, losing around 10% is basically unavoidable, but typical loss at that point is closer to 15 or 20% simply due to age.
You can use something like AccuBattery to measure the current real capacity of your battery. It will measure the amperages going in and out of the battery, calculate the milliamphours, then average it over several battery cycles.
Even when new, the real capacity will vary several hundred milliamphours from cell to cell, within the same exact model. Batteries are a chemical device, some inconsistency from one cell to the next is unavoidable. That’s why cell monitoring and balancing circuits are so critical in multi-cell packs.
You may not have noticed a difference, but the capacity loss that your battery has suffered is almost certainly worse than it would have been if you’d charged wired and slowly.
talking out your ass
Batteries are a chemical device
I have a Ph.D. in battery chemistry
you may not have noticed
Ok that’s what matters in a device. A 10% falloff on a 2 day battery life is not significant.
charged wired and slowly
You can charge wirelessly slowly. I had the system set up to charge to full over the course of the entire night which is a rate around C/10.
Then you’re not exactly using wireless charging the way the average person does, are you?
A “hotter” charger will degrade the battery more. Have I at any point claimed something beyond that?
The average Qi charger wont trickle at the slowest speed possible to meet a schedule, unless a user specifically sets it up that way. Comparing the average use cases and user habits, the cooler charging solution will net you more cycles.
Does your doctorate allow you to somehow claim otherwise?
There’s a wide temperature range where these materials function optimally. You’d need to get them to the point where they’re burning to touch before any significant degradation occurs. For reference 50 °C is a good temperature for tea.
Now that, is much better than walking in with “my battery has had ‘zero’ degradation in three years”.
Why did you lead with something that sounds like obvius anecdotal bullshit if you knew this?
That said my phone sits between 55 and 65 degrees when wireless charging at even just 5 watts. I don’t think it’s ever not been hot to the touch when picking it off a wireless charger.
How exactly?
Also, my phone charges slower with a wireless charger.
Lots of hand wavy theories and generalizations in the answers below, some of them sound very convincing. None of them actually cite any sources or backup those theories with data.
Here’s my own acedotal experience. I’ve put my phone down on a seemingly well designed wireless charging pad every night for almost 4 years and this phones battery has shown zero sign of deterioration that I can see. This is the first phone I’ve ever owned with wireless charging and also the first with a battery that hasn’t given up the ghost in 2 years or less. The same pad also charges my smart watch every night, which doesn’t even have any other option for charging.
Next they’ll be telling you to avoid using cruise control on the highway because it will wear out the transmission. Use your phone as it was designed to be used and stop worrying.
The problem is heat, not charging speed. A wired charger heats the phone less than a wireless charger, and a slow charger heats it less than a fast one.
It’s not like wireless charging will literally destroy your battery instantly, but it WILL do so faster than wired charging at the same speed.
You could offset the heat by charging even slower via wireless (easy with something that has a small battery to begin with, like a watch) but no matter what method is used, the one that runs the battery the coolest WILL last the longest, whether the difference is just one year out five, more, or less.
Magnetic charging loses some energy in the form of heat on both coils.
Technologies like MagSafe lessen the severity of energy loss via ensuring the coils allign, however there is still some energy lost in the form of heat.
This is just a limitation of electromagnetic induction.
It’s a producer of heat placed right next to the battery.
This inefficiency also makes it take more energy to charge your battery. However, I would imagine it’s a nominal amount.
That’s an interesting theory. I’d like to see some numbers because I really doubt that this heating could be anywhere close to the many other kinds of heat produced through normal phone use. Especially considering that you’re unlikely to be stressing the biggest sources of heat in your phone (the screen and the processor) while it’s sitting in a wireless charging cradle. Also, the charging circuits certainly monitor and adjust for this kind of heat dissipation specifically and are able to control it far better than, for example, the sun hitting the screen or a warm pocket.
I remember LTT wanting to find out the damage that wireless or fast charging does but found that the way we charge our phones mattered more or something: https://youtu.be/AF2O4l1JprI
I found the segment and may have summarized it incorrectly but I can’t rewatch the video entirely right now.
I can only offer you my experience-based evidence, but three magnetic chargers I’ve used have all made my phone significantly hotter then charging it at the equivalent speed with a cable.
This has been true across 6 Android devices. Two from Google. Four from Samsung. However, I will also say that because of this trend, I stopped using wireless chargers about a year and a half ago, so it’s quite possible they might have improved since then.
The charging circuit will maintain a “safe” temperature, sure, but using any battery monitor app you like, you can clearly see for yourself that when wireless charging, the phone will sit at a higher temperature during the process, than when wired charging. And every fraction of a degree matters. Not when you use the feature once, but if you do it every day, always charging at a higher temperature, it WILL shorten the lifespan of the battery. The same way every charge does, but to a slightly higher degree for every fraction of a degree in higher temperature.
The battery does not suffer as much damage from heat when discharging, or when just sitting there, not that that is good for it, either. But every extra bit of thermal strain WHILE charging, causes more damage than if it were running cooler. That’s simply a fact of lithium ion batteries.
Everyone raves about usb-c but despite my hating everything Apple, the lightning port’s physical design is so much better.
Who thought putting a thin circuit board projection inside the port was a good idea?
Lightning is an amazing design but I fucking hate that my XS Max is USB TWO SPEEDS
That’s the signal interface like the number of pins and active termination circuitry.
Physically there’s no reason for USB c to have a male nub inside a larger female jack and the reverse for the male end. It makes it more fragile and harder to keep clean.
I just used my new phone to take a picture of my old phones charging port, which worked only with some cables at certain angles, and, yeah… It’s a horror show up in there
I hear a lot of people saying to clean the port and I agree. I’ve found with usb c it’s often very difficult to find something thin enough, but I’ve found a staple to be surprisingly good at the job
The little pin that comes with phones to open the sim tray works well.
Sewing pin
Dry air can does the job pretty well too.
The sharp end of a safety pin did it for me
I use a disposable dental floss pick. The toothpick side is very narrow and no concern scratching too hard down in a port since it is plastic.
This is the one thing that sucks about Apple going USB-C. Lightning is easier to clean for me and my pockets are a lint factory apparently.
I have never been an apple user, but that lightning port always seemed like a good design. Seems way more durable than usb-c
Yeah, it’s surprising how much pocket fluff gets in there. If it no longer clicks into place, chances are it needs a good clean.
I’ve started to train myself to put my phone in my pocket “upside down” with the charging port up. It collects much less pocket lint, but now I drop it more when I take it out and flip it around. I’m hoping that I get better at this soon.
I switched over to magnetic charging cables a few years back, and would never look back. Keeps the port protected, protects against wear out, and the cables are now universal with Micro USB and lightning devices.
I’m just looking at this picture of the Hulk wearing himself as a hat.
I rolled over a brand new cable with my office chair. Now it does this. I’m forcing myself to use it for a year as penance.
Hey. I’m going to ask why? Like if you are extremely tight financially I get it. But why make yourself suffer every day if it’s not needed? It’s going to be annoying and a slight negative to your day every day.
Two reasons:
Because I’m a filthy hippy and I don’t want to throw a brand new cord in the landfill because I fucked up.
Dealing with it for a long enough time period will make me think of how I wrecked it and I won’t haphazardly leave my cables lying on the floor any more.
Ultimately it’s your life yah.
But I can’t help but think that adult humans don’t need to do penance and suffer for a year just because they made such a small mistake. It’s like a 12th century religious act.
I believe that adult humans can just learn not to do something without religious style self imposed suffering. If I burn my hand on the stove I don’t need to keep the wound in pain for a year in order to remember not to burn my hand again.
This all being said I am a humanist materialist. If people come from a spiritual background where self imposed suffering helps the soul I can see why they would do such a thing.
Calling it penance was a joke.
Ok. I’m curious now though. Do you choose to suffer unnecessarily as a joke on yourself? Is there a reason you choose to suffer when you don’t have to?
Like I can’t relate to your choice at all here and am very curious.
I don’t know what to tell you. It still works and I don’t need to move my phone while I’m working or sleeping.
I don’t consider minor inconveniences suffering.
Get some needle-nosed tweezers or something very thin and use it to dig out the obscene amount of pocket lint that compacts itself down in there. Keep trying even if nothing comes out at first. This works for me every time.
I’ve found that a plastic toothpick is the perfect tool for this. It is a soft enough material not to scratch the phone but it digs out the lint. A normal wood toothpick also works, but the plastic ones tend to be thinner making them easier to scrape with.
If the phone is still having issues after that or looks visibly inside, some contact cleaner applied and scrubbed with a pipe cleaner will remove gunk.
Get a dental pick and use it to pull the lint out of the charging port
I just bring it to a phone repair place, and they spend about five minutes in the back cleaning it for free.
Yeah my phone is in this stage, so I mostly charge it wirelessly now.
This is funny?
Sadly funny, because everyone can relate at some point of their smartphone ownership.
My steam deck just started doing this…
9 times out of 10 it’s just compacted dust in the charging port.
or a bad/cheap charger. Rarely is it the socket itself
Used to be the socket with micro USB, but USB c is much more resilient. And any damage usually occurs on the cable end and not the socket. So worst case just replace the cable
I did replace the cable, which is why it sucked when it still is only charging from a certain angle. It’s the device. Don’t see any dust in there…
It’s honestly a bit of a miracle. The whole male port design looks like it would be asking for trouble compared to a female port like lightning, but the engineering seems to hold up.
My wife has an iPhone, I have Android. I’ve easily bought her twice as many lightning cable replacements over the years, compared to USB C ones.
Micro USB is another story, that port never should’ve existed
Not talking about the cable, yes you do want a durable cable, but end of the day, your cable goes bad you’re out 10-20 dollars tops. On the other hand if something happens to the port you’re out potentially a couple hundred dollars getting it repaired. Many people will even just replace the device at that point. The design of the lightning port seems much more robust than USB-C.
It’s me! New Cable!
Holup, is this real or fan art? When did they make Cable a twink?
German has a word for this: Wackelkontakt
There is a synth module designed specifically to replicate this effect for audio jacks:
https://bastl-instruments.com/eurorack/modules/wackel-kontakt
I have enough DIY Wackelkontakte already without ever trying…
Of course there is
A thin wooden toothpick (those rounded, not those flat), can do the job.
I’ve seen a clip of someone putting a dab of hot glue then pulling it out as it cools. Been meaning to try it
Depending on the materials used in the connector, this will either work, or fuck up your phone completely. If the hot glue sticks to anything built in, it’s not going to come out coherently. Cleaning it out manually would be an absolute bitch.
Yeah but it’s a risk I’m willing to take
