That appears to be bending them at all. Its a bit like clock work. After a couple months of use. The insulation just behind the lighting plug starts to separate and bubble out or wrinkle. Not long after that the cord stops reading as “certified”. Though it still seems perfectly functional. Apple’s certification just won’t let it charge the device. Then it starts to intermittently connect and disconnect a couple times a second, not charging but sending off an annoying little chime. They rapidly become useless after that. Flat cables. Round. Braided, Apple brand. They all seem to do it.
It only seems to happen at the lightning side of the cable, never the usb. There’s some sort of design flaw there. That point, where cable meets plug. Is the highest stress part of a cable. But I’ve never seen anything else fail quite like that. Insulation commonly splits there, separating around the internal wires. But provided those wires are intact, the cord works fine. I’ve seen cables snap there of course. Or something separate internally killing the cord. And I’ve dealt with a lot of different sorts of cables.
Either a wire is separating internally, despite the cable being otherwise intact. And for not much reason. Or something technically not necessary is way too fragile in there. There’s a really fast and specific way these things go bad.
I’ve also had a couple of the little tabs for the lighting port work themselves loose and just snap off just from plugging and unplugging them. Which is GREAT. Cause you need a pair of needle nose pliers to get them out the phone.
