My last 2 phones have used USB-C (the symmetrical thing) and I’ve never had a problem with needing to hold it juussssssst so like I have with the micro USB.
Interestingly, my iPad uses USB C. Our newer iPhones still use lightning. I think the EU’s insistence is because the lightning cable is used by nothing except Apple devices. If they mandated USB C, it’d be fine by me. I don’t think there’s any reason Apple couldn’t switch all newer devices to use USB C beyond “We’re APPPLE and WE DON’T WANNA”.
I missed this first time around. Yes, a gunked-up Lightning port will also cause the “just-so position or no charge” problem. The iPhone I mentioned in post #31 had a Lightning charger.
I will say that once I went crazy on the in-port gunk and stopped caring about damaging the port, the Lightning port was rendered as good as new and charging was back to normal.
I think the difference might be that the USB-C receptacle (the female end) has a central tongue around which debris can collect, while a Lightning receptacle does not.
That is part of the issue, but another is that with USB, the outer part of the ‘invaginated’ male connector is used as the structural to hold the connector in the receptacle, and then the inside is dimensioned to make a slight interference between contacts. The problem with this is that many cheaply made connectors are not well-controlled dimensionally and often tend toward being oversized to assure a secure fit, which causes excessive wear on the receptacle, particularly if there is any debris in the socket. This has long been a problem with USB-A but is exacerbated with Micro USB (and the rarely now seen Mini USBs) because of their more complicated shapes.
The Apple Lightning connector avoids this problem by just being a straight bayonet connector, so there is really only one dimensional tolerance to hold for a secure fit. Apple specifically recommends against using non-approved Lightning-style connectors because oversized connectors can damage a socket, but they do approve third party vendors to build Lightning-spec connectors. The Lightning connector makes a lot of sense for a small mobile device because it has the minimum possible profile and is pretty robust against incidental damage from lateral pulling. However, it is not as extensible as the USB-C spec, and in particular cannot really support HDMI DDC at anything higher than 1080p or high power charging, hence why Apple uses the USB-C standard for iPads and lower power laptops.
For what it is worth, the Apple argument is that users of Apple products have already invested in Lightning cables, and because they tend to purchase Apple phones repeatedly switching to USB-C would place a burden on those owners to buy new cables. Even to the extent that the claim is valid, USB-C (to USB-C and USB-A) cables are so ubiquitous at this point that owners probably own several of them, so yes, it is mostly an issue of wanting to retain their proprietary connector. However, in the scale of things this seems like a pretty minor issue for the EU to be fretting about, and it isn’t as if the Apple ‘monopoly’ over the Lightning connector is preventing anyone from switching to an Android phone if they were so inclined,
The other thing is that between wireless charging (using the Qi standard) and Bluetooth headphones, you may only rarely need to connect anything physically to the phone.
I’m in the US but I have plenty of devices that use USB-C. I’m an iPhone user but I can’t imagine avoiding a different brand of phone just because of the table. That does seem pretty silly. I can’t imagine that EU countries are much different.
I had this issue with an iphone a few years back. Charging cord would not stay in unless I held it in place. Turns out it was a couple years of pocket lint getting squished into the port each time i’d plug it in until finally there was too much at the back of the port to hold a connection. I ended up getting it out with a sewing needle. Compressed air did nothing, because it was too tightly packed. Charge cable clicked right into place after that.
Not having USB-C is one of the reasons I’ve avoided an iPhone. When they switch next year, I intend to look at it more closely (they’ve also added another issue I had, an Always On Display). I mean my iPad Pro and Macbook have USB-C, I don’t want a different cable to keep up with.
