Clearly not “everyone.” All cables fail, so it’s not really the opposite problem. It’s the same problem, I just have a different experience with the USB-C cables.
(And here, today, we literally got rid of a lamp because it had a frayed power cord. Seems we could have used that reinforced lamp cord before the earthquake.)
I’ve found the far bigger problem is when the phone’s jack is damaged, I had to pitch a phone for that and am now extremely cautious plugging and unplugging the phone, and never use corded headphones, another failure point. I have one set of bluetooth headphones with a damaged jack that has to be propped just right to charge. Now I just got a new Moto with USB-C, and had to get a bagful of adapters so I don’t have to have 2 cables everywhere phones and other Micro-usb devices get charged. And I still have several mini-usb devices! I have a wall of nails with cords of every description hanging from it. Odd proprietary camera USB’s, strange analog camcorder cords, some I just don’t even know but am afraid to pitch.
Maybe I’m fooling myself, but does anyone else feel like the nylon-braided cables don’t last very long?
I’ve been tossing cables lately. There’s a lot of older devices (mini USB and USB-b) that either don’t exist or don’t work anymore. And most of my non-phone stuff is micro so I’ve still got 3 flavors of cable hanging around (thanks work!).
This is my second USB-C based phone. I’ve had no jack problems. But I’ve been using HTC flagships for, well forever. Last one was a 10, which didn’t hold up well in other ways. And I thought the HTC One had a bad jack. Turned out to be a micro cable that broke in a unique way. The jack had separated inside the plug so it looked fine, but would only charge if you held it like a phone with a broken port. The jack fell off the cable when I gently jiggled, stuck in the port. I have no idea how it held up to weeks of being pulled out of the jack in that state.
New phone is a Pixel, so it should hold up well. My cousin has the original Pixel and its still going strong, no problems of any kind after 4 years. Might as well be a new phone as far as he’s concerned. A bit why I switched. The HTCs were always mostly stock Android on durable hardware with a smooth UI and not a lot of bullshit. I’ve always gotten at least 4 years out of a phone. The HTC 10 was not that, and barely made it to 3. But the Pixel is the new that. So here’s hoping jack problems are not in my future. Did have a Blackberry with port problems years ago though.
I may toss most of the micro cables and grab some adapters, because they’re all over the place in various states of still functional disrepair. And its not a lot of stuff at this point. A Bluetooth speaker, a discount fire tablet I picked up to jail break and spit media at a Chrome Cast but haven’t been using for a while. The Chrome Cast, which is also not in heavy use. But frustratingly both the new mouse and the new xbox controller I just bought are both micro, despite being very recent models. So at least a few micros are staying around.
They’re not terribly durable. And I wouldn’t really expect them to be. The braided cable thing is about the sort of braided cables that have steel or other metal braid protecting the cable with fabric braid over it. Or Kevlar, ballistic nylon and other really durable materials. It comes out of pro audio cables where strong braided coverings are often the most durable gig/field cables. Rubber with that sort of durability would be to thick and hard to work with.
Regular fabric or nylon is still gonna be thinner than rubber/plastic insulation, but it’ll be weaker. So a lot of the braided cables are just pretending to be the reinforced kind of cable. So good braided cables are, but cheap braided cables are definitely not durable.
I’m struggling with being a cheapskate and klutz, so I’ve been buying Motos, also stock and little bloatware. My 2nd succumbed to an apparently bad speaker at 18 months. I say apparently since I know I had headphone jack issues, and wonder if, despite a diagnostic indicating a bad speaker, it was an artifact of the jack. But the G6 is quite a good phone for $200 and the cameras are dramatically improving. An $800 phone would have to last 6 years to outdo that 18 months on plain usage value.
Yeah I tend not to break things often. And usually use things till they just wear out. Seriously non-functional, rotting away wear out. So I tend to seek out things that’ll take a long time to do that. The phones that do that for me are getting nuts expensive though. My monthly bill is low enough that broken up across bills its not a huge difference, because its just me and its just the one line. But a lot of the cheaper phones that look like they’d work for me aren’t available on Verizon, I very nearly switched carriers and went with a One Plus the last couple go arounds. But every other carrier I have to head to my porch every time I get a phone call. T-mobile is getting close, but they just don’t have a consistent voice or data signal around here.
has anyone ever had a cable last long enough to wear out the connector in real life? that isn’t where 100% of my cables break, we all know where, on the cable side of the connector, frayed cable.
also, i wouldn’t want a cable too hard and durable, i’d rather the cable connector side wear out, the port side on a phone or computer is often much more difficult to replace than a new cable.
that explains it very nicely. charging only cables are only good for one thing.
both my apple usb-c cables died very quickly, replaced them with MUCH better usb-c cables that have held up well, same for my lightning cables. i do think brand matters, but only if you really pay extra for the quality cables meant to reduce breakage. but you are likely correct. in every wear test comparison i’ve seen micro-usb far surpasses usb-c in plugs and unplugs. usb-c much more quickly becomes too loose and gets too much play, turns out the clever way the put the pins on the inside of a flattened donut is the cause. physics are a bitch. lightning had the right idea a simple single slab with a few connectors on it, that side seldom wears out, it is apple cables that are shite.
to make matters worse usb-c is just a connector type, the cable and support situation for different protocols over usb-c is a total shit show.
if anyone wants reversible charging cables why not the reversible mag ones? you leave them in the port eliminating wear, and the cable practically attaches itself and disconnects if snagged instead of tossing your phone (in theory).
this is just so much smarter then the above option, and magnets! 1000x better choice.
Because they are designed per the USB standard. They may fit and work in your USB ports, but they aren’t USB cables and are most certainly not USB certified. Caveat emptor.
Also these are only for charging, not data.
I’ve found that all my USB cables have a pronounced curve near the end, where I’ve left my phone/etc on the edge of a table to charge, with the cord hanging down.
This curve is just pronounced enough to be noticeable when I pick it up, so I get it the right way round at least 90% of the time.
I don’t have any USB-C devices yet, so I’m happily only using micro USB for everything.
My experience with cables wearing out at the connector has led me to start reinforcing those regions with Sugru It helps some but is generally much more difficult to mold prettily than the manufacturer would lead you to believe. (All of mine end up with a fingerprint texture unlike the ones in this picture.)
I’ve got some very similar right-angle ones that are fine for data too.
I think they’re fermions. Half-integer spin, so you have to turn them twice to turn them over.
i’ve done something similar using electricians wire heat shrink to a few.
there used to be a standard solution to this that worked pretty well, but it has fallen out of favor because of visual aesthetic…the part near the end with all the slits cut in it to allow and control flex and reenforce the cable sheath.
I recently went through this with Verizon. I bought an unlocked LG G6 to find out that they wouldn’t register it, not that the network couldn’t physically support it, but thst Verizon simply wouldn’t let you bring last year’s phone to their network. I ended up switching the G6 out for a G7 for not much more, which because it is new is supported by everyone.
I did consider the unlocked Moto G6…but my old phone was an LG G3. The Moto G6 was only a bit faster in cpu power, but worse screen and everything else similar. I have to say the LG G7 is great, I’m not even using 30% battery in a day.
Besides a lot of new phones support wireless charging, so jack life spans should be greatly improved.
That actually surprised me when I went to buy this phone. Checking Verizon’s site to see what was definitely available before I went looking for a deal from 3rd parties.
There just aren’t many phones actually available for them. The iPhone 7’s the newest iPhones. 2 models of pixel. 3 of the latest, top Samsung’s, 2 Motorola models. And I think that was it. Maybe a grand total of 15 options, and there were more prompts to buy your old phone than info about the new one.
Like game stop. We don’t carry what you want but we’ll offer minimal credit for old shit.
And unlocked phones are a bit of a dead end. You still can’t activate a GSN phone with them at all, despite the fact that they’ve apparently made their network cross compatible with GSM, and use GSM for certain connections and areas. You can’t just swap an activated sim into a compatible phone because their Sims are some kind of non-sim sim. And they refuse to activate CDMA phones that aren’t on that 15 phone approved list unless you head to a physical store and bribe or otherwise schmooze a sales rep.
You need to step out Verizon’s cloud of bullshit and see the light! My son has a Moto on Verizon’s network for $21.25/mo for unlimited talk/text & 3gb. How? A 1 year prepay on an MVNO called Red Pocket that offers service on all the major US networks. I have 500min/500text/500mb service from them on ATT for $10/mo.
This is the way cell service should be sold IMO. Use your own phone and buy whatever service you like. My wife had a hand me down Verizon phone with them, when it croaked we simply got her an new sim from Redpocket for a Moto and ATT. So simple.
Well like I said no other carrier out here has anything like practical coverage. T mobile comes closest but the work phone is on there. And at home it only functions on a particular part of my front porch. And there are big chunks of my sales territory where it’s a brick.
There are a couple of those discount resellers. But they all rent space on Sprint and AT&T. Neither of which are usable out here. Work had to switch our phones from AT&T to T Mobile because it was impossible to do our jobs (100% of which require the phone) out here and some other outlying areas.
That’s the entire idea with GSM and it tends to be how phones work in other countries. But despite legal changes intended to create that in the US it doesn’t ever seem to come about. Locking phones to carriers has been various kinds of not allowed for decades but here we are.
Redpocket…Resells…Verizon. Can I say it clearer! Check them out. Here’s a screenshot of their page
That’s, from the left: ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint. My son’s city has crappy service from any provider other than Verizon too. I know this looks like shilling for them, but I gasp when I hear what people are paying. I have a friend with an ancient iPhone still paying $100/mo!! I have always gotten my service from MVNO’s.
That might be worth looking into.
But from what I understand these sorts of companies are either restricted regionally in their sales market, or their access to the networks they rent space on is regionally bound in some way.
I think everyone around here has tried another carrier or a MVNO. One of the nasty things that happens, even on Sprint. Is that some bits of my area you end up roaming. I know some one who only realized the exact square mile around their house wasn’t technically covered when a large bill for roaming charges arrived.
And even on Verizon there’s one particular restaurant we eat at out here. Where if I sit in their patio area my phone is technically roaming. It’s a weird confluence of being in an outlying area of an outlying area, being at the very border of US land mass, low local population and just how hard the monopolies are out here. And even 10 or 20 miles west none of this is an issue.
I think I’ve gone over before my options for broadband internet coverage. Option one is Optimum/spectrum. Option two is to pay out of pocket to have the infrastructure to connect our neighborhood to fiber installed. Then ask very nicely if Verizon might like to connect that stuff to FiOS so we can pay them for internet. When our home owners association looked into it the minimum cost was going to be $45k to the group and then a grand or two at each house for the individual hook ups. And that was only if we could convince Verizon to run the wires to their service area half a mile down the road at their own expense.
Satalite tv is a hard no. No company will service our couple of blocks as there aren’t enough houses occupied year round for them to bother. And when I say hard no, I mean that’s what the company tells you when you call and ask.
Shits weird here.
