People don’t try cleaning their charging port before buying a new device? Thats crazy. I really have a hard time believing people don’t try cleaning before buying a new device.
Most people buy a new cell phone long before the charger stops working.
I’m weird. I’ve had my cell phone since 2020. But MOST people buy one every 2-3 years. Just because the newest latest and greatest just came out.
My 5 year old phone still has no issue charging. And when the battery starts dying, MY battery is user replaceable.
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I’d believe it, especially with all the propaganda from big corporations and the fomo they push with new technology. Looking at Apple and their fucking yearly phone cycles.
Don’t forget to consume more! Buy two just in case! Consume! CONSUME!!!
I mean, it’s one phone, paper_moon. What could it cost? $1000?
Sounds like you haven’t met very many people.
They just need an excuse to buy a new phone.
Cheese and rice theres a lot of responses jumping to accusations of people too lazy but I’ve never heard someone too lazy to clean a phone port for $1000 savings.
100% of the people im surrounded by in my family/friends would be to afraid of breaking it beyond trade in value towards the new phone. My case was extreme but since the screens got better id have to guess charging issues is up there for one of the biggest reasons people trade their phones in.
A 1¢ toothpick works 99% of the time.
Who’s wasting money on 1 cent toothpicks?
LOL, that’s the value of them—not the price of them.
I use the pick side from one of those dental flossers to clean mine. Works great and easy to replace.
I came into the comments to say this. I keep one in my drawer, trimmed down a bit so it can go all the way around inside a usb-c port. They’re perfect since they’re very narrow and since they are soft you won’t damage the port.
I can only get a bent staple into the USB-C port on mine, which makes me nervous but does the job. Will have to see if a pick works.
Lol you just saying that made me nervous. Using a staple would make it easy to accidentally break a contact off entirely, and I’m not sure if there are any consequences for shorting any of the USB pins to each other. Even a twist tie would be better, since it has another material to do the rubbing and the metal is less stiff than a staple.
Edit: there’s another comment further down saying the risk of a short isn’t an issue, but I’d still avoid using a staple just because of the hardness probably being higher than the contact.
I came here to say this. I bought a cleaning kit but all the tools were too thick. The plastic dental pick was perfect. I used a drop of 90% rubbing alcohol to loosen the lint first.
I used to shock and amaze people when I’d pull out half a cottonballs worth of pocket lint and get their phones working again.
And don’t waste $10 on a kit. A toothpick and canned air does everything you need.
As I told another person with similar reply, the purchase was for the adhesive plugs to prevent this from happening in the future as i prepped to buy a new phine but the plugs happened to come with a jankey cleaning kit and turned my frown upside down. The plugs are as much of the take away as the cleaning the port.
Alternatively, just grab a free toothpick from a restaurant and use that to clean the port.
Toothpicks are WAY too thick. A sewing needle did the job for me though
I wouldn’t use metal to clean it. A sewing needle is surely hard enough to scratch the coating on the pins. Plastic or wood would be less destructive for repeated use.
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My phone is a Galaxy Z-Fold5, not new but not old enough for me to replace since the Fold7 just shipped.
Was hell bent sure the issue causing my phone to begin not accepting charging cables* was something Samsung was doing with their software updates. (*It charged fine with contactless chargers if youre ok with it taking 10-14 hours to charge)
It was too much of a coincidence that the phone charged 100% fine with any and all cables. Download a software update (not android update, this was samsung delivered update) phone doesnt charge with a cable after that for 2-3 weeks. Im T1Diabetic who uses wifi connected glucose monitor, so it fuckin drains battery juice 24/7 with very little setting controls to mitigate it. So I spent 2-3 weeks battling with it to charge on charging pads.
Didn’t change a thing with what I was doing and BAM another Samsung update, weirdly close to the last update and fuck me running if the phone didnt start charging very very tenderly with charging cables again.
Eventually figured fuck it, if its hard to do the phone is broke if its easy enough to do then maybe it will help and bought a pack of adhesive rubber type C port plugs from Amazon that came with a super cheap cleaning kit. It wasnt anything special. It came with the picture pointed and spaded q-tips, a flexible wire brush, then I used my own zip tie that I shaped, a sim card tool and a cloth for cleaning glasses. AND WENT TO FUCKING TOWN.
Everytime you plug in your charger to your phone, any dust that is in there is getting buttfucked into the back of the phone’s charging port like its a muzzleloaded gunpowder. Lol a bit hyperbplic but you get the point.
Finished cleaning the port. Plugged it in. First fuckin try, no fighting it, no switching chargers, no “charging but not fast charging” bullshit, no more voids in guessing my blood sugar, no more watching tv holding charger into phone. AND $1,000+ THAT IS STILL IN MY FUCKING ACCOUNT.
I gotta assume this is the #1 driver for phones needing to be replaced ever since the screens stopped shattering everytime you sneezed. The adhesive rubber plug is amazing. It is hardly noticeable and stays in the charging port even with my opening and closing of screens. It never pops out.
Honestly the smartest $10 I think I may have ever spent.
TLDR: Phone not charging? Buy $10 type C cleaning kit from amazon, watch 5min video on tips for cleaning, clean charging port for night and day results. Not difficult, very hard to fuck up your phone unless you jackhammer the port cleaning it. Saves you the cost of a new phone.
And obviously this isnt a fix all for all charging issues.
Could you please link the kit you bought?
By all means try a tooth pick and pure alcohol, if that doesn’t work a professional might get you set straight.
Repair shops can do a better job cleaning than a home option. I had a data and charge problem, bought a kit and tried 3x times; it didn’t work . Bought new cables just in case that was the issue. Brought it in for repair fully expecting to pay for a port repair. Repair shop did a through cleaning charged me $15 and sent me on my way with everything working.
Gotta be careful as well with USB-C ports. I managed to break off the middle section while cleaning a couple of times. Not a good thing, luckily phone battery was already dying at the time.
As an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure I recommend those tiny rubber stoppers you see in the photo. They have a peel and stick part that goes under your case which retains the plug on a strip of rubber. That strip might wear out in a few years and rip, but they cost almost nothing to replace (and in fact come in packs).
Phones used to have these things built in, then they stopped in the smartphone era because they didn’t look as sleek and futuristic I guess. Now, if you have a case, it once again makes hardly any difference to the appearance.
That was also when a single charge lasted for days or a week. Now we use our phones too much and multiple charges a day isn’t uncommon for people. I couldn’t imagine having to remove a little plug to charge my phone as often as I do.
I have a cheap pack of plastic Walgreens tooth picks that are perfect for this. My phone case has a rubber cover for the port so I don’t have to do this often.
Do the same with your butthole. Thank me later
Genuine curious question (assuming you are from the west): Why do you guys use toilet paper to clean your butt instead of a jet spray like we do in the east?
Jet spray. Toilet paper is just for drying off afterwards. Or dressing like a mummy
a simple sewing needle does the job
I would not use metal simply because its hardness is going to be similar or higher than the hardness of the contacts themselves, which means there’s a chance it could scratch or break the contact entirely.
You generally won’t be touching the contacts much, since most gunk like lint can just be scooped out. Just be a bit gentle and you’ll be fine.
I use a toothpick.
My charging port died and I’m so pissed. 2 year old Google pixel. Never buying pixel again. I looked up how to desolder the charging port and it’s a pain in the ass. It has this like weird shield over it and I have no idea how to desolder this thing. Why can’t it be straight forward
Why the fuck would they solder the charging part to the main board? That’s just actively malicious.
It’s not just soldered there’s like a shield with anchor pins surrounding it that makes it hard to desolder
Shouldn’t a Pixel that new support wireless charging? I’m surprised at how many people still rely on plugging their phones in to charge them these days. At the very least, it’s a workaround for a broken port.
It has wireless charging but I have a few on call situations and diabetes that I prefer a plugged in charge just in case I accidently knock the phone off the charger at night.
Just get a bit of plastic packaging or something similar. Cut thin long rectangle. Then cut a small chunk out near the tip to form a small hook. Scrape along the bottom of the port in all directions. Pull out fluff, then repeat until no more fluff comes out. Then go again as you won’t have got it all out even if it looks like it
So the amazon purchase was for the silicon plugs on a flap that adheres to your phone so it’s always plugged. As preparation to buy a new phone. It just happened to come with this lanky little cleaning kit. But the plugs are just as big of a takeaway as the cleaning.
Dare I say a classic 1-2-punch with corrective maintenence followed by pr3ventative maintenence!
Hey thanks for all the tips in the comments, I’ve got these brand new stiff-ish cleaning brushes and this one worked really well to clean out my charging port and now there’s no more beach sand grinding noise when I shove my cable into the charging port.
You don’t want to be too rough on it. There’s electrical contacts that can get blocked by dust, lint, and crap, so cleaning helps, but the contacts themselves aren’t that thick, so you don’t want to wear them down too much while cleaning. A cleaning solution helps loosen up everything with less force and a softer brush/pad is less likely to knock bits of contact off.
So just be careful because that brush might be like blowing in nintendo cartridges (clearing dust but leaving saliva specs that would wear the contacts), where it helps in the short term but makes things worse in the long term (resulting in more blowing and an acceleration of the process).
