working. Whats up with that? It gives a message that the device is non standard and might not work right. But it worked OK when I bought it. What is making it go bad?
That sounds like what happens to me if I try to recharge my Bluetooth headset from any portable power supply, like a powerbank.
I’m so spoiled for any kind of corded headset that, when I recently had to spend almost an entire day on planes and in airports, I finally broke down and bought a second Bluetooth headset at the first airport. (And then I hardly used either headset during eight hours of flights and time spent in airports. But I like having the option to do so if I wish.)
How long is “a bit”?
Most of these cords are extremely cheap Chinese crap. As in, 2 or 3 cents apiece leaving the factory gate. Every time the cord bends, the micro-fine = cheap wires inside get one step closer to breaking. Once one of the several wires breaks there are two possible results:
- It was a power wire and the cord is now stone dead.
- It was a data wire and the device can no longer communicate with the power supply to negotiate what sort of power they can agree to use together. Some devices will then report the charger as non-standard. Others will simply charge very slowly. Others will refuse to charge at all.
Or you have to bend the cable just right for the wires to touch again and deliver juice to your machine. Though to be fair I haven’t found the expensive cables to be more reliable, except maybe for the specific ones that come with your phone.
OP, Can I ask a question?
When you say “charger cord”, do you mean the actual wire, the charger brick, or the whole thing all together because distinguishing between the charger and the wire is just technical bullshit that doesn’t matter to you?
TBH, you have a history of lodging technical complaints with completely inadequate initial information, so I’m curious if the other responses here are on the right track at all.
Huh? I have a cord , a phone and an outlet. I don’t have no brick.
Like a few weeks, or so.
So, the cord then. (Most people actually do have a brick, because most outlets don’t come with a USB power output. Assuming that’s what you mean.)
So, yeah, like the others said: if you bought from the “lowest bidder”, they won’t be very hardy and will be prone to failure due to internal wire or connector faults. Even “mid-priced” normally reliable brands can have occasional bad product. At our home, we’ve accumulated a lot of decent and reliable USB cables by virtue of buying lots of cables and tossing the ones that weren’t reliable. It’s a crappy way to do it, but lifelong reliability of that kind of cable in normal usage situations is apparently too much to ask for.
Just for the sake of checking, are these bad cables still bad if you plug them into another USB power source, like another outlet with a USB output or a charging brick or the USB port of a computer? (Just to make sure that the cable is the common failure point in all three scenarios.)
I find that Lightning cables, even the “official” ones, die very quickly. If you look at the connector you can see that one of the metal “ribbons” has gone black. Sometimes the cable will still work if you flip it over (even though Lightning are supposed to work either way).
I say adaptor for brick. Yes I have tried it in all configs.
I got a new one from CVS fro free. It has a cord that is more “wiry” and when it bends it stays in that shape, if you know what I mean. The package says “For iphone…” which is the salient thing to look for according to the salesperson. I guess it’s caveat emptor as ususal.
You mean the little brassy stripes on the plug? It actually burns out?
This has been my experience as well.
Charging cables are disposable, temporary things. Either the connector wears down and doesn’t fit tightly enough, or the wires inside break. This is why the move toward modular, reasonably-standardized USB cables is a good thing (yes, I know, Apple does its own thing, but they sell enough of their stuff that there’s a big market for their cables). Now the price and ability to find what you need match the quality. A while ago, getting a new charger for your phone meant tracking down the special cord that was only used by your phone and three other models, and which only came with a hard-wired adapter. And it didn’t necessarily last a really long time.
Well, yes, but you know what’s never gone bad on me? USB cables. You know what else has never gone bust? The cables used to connect to the original iPod/iPad. I still have those working cables around and the oldest is ten years old. Lightning, OTOH, last a few months. I may have a cable somewhere that’s lasted longer, but we have so many devices that use them and so many cables that the failure rate seems to be about one a month.