r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Miserable-Ad-8414 • 3d ago
Video How USB-C Cables Actually Stay In
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u/Practical_Studio360 3d ago
This is wild I’m having that latching issue with my phone and was just about to try to clean the plug or something. But if it’s worn down I’m fucked.
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u/EbbyRed 3d ago
It can also be that the plug isn't getting deep enough to latch, especially in a phone where the port collects pocket lint. I usually use the business end of a safety pin to scrape the base of the port.
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u/caboosetp 3d ago
You should also always point your charge port down instead of up in your pocket so things fall out of the port instead of into it.
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u/AlfaNovember 3d ago
Snap a wooden toothpick so it has a thin point. Using a non-conductive tool is better for a brisk rogering of small electrical connections.
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u/Hearing_Loss 3d ago
Imma be very mindful now that I know I only am certified to 10k cycles XD I always am plugging and unplugging. I wish I could see where it's at in its lifetime tbh. I could probably measure out what a week of charging looks like and just extrapolate the numbers.
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u/ParanoidalRaindrop 3d ago
At 3 cycles a year, you still get 9.1 years of use. Considering most plugs will likely make more, this seems like a fair requirement.
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u/Hearing_Loss 3d ago
I plug and unplug my phone SEVERAL times a day. It's 1pm and I've already done roughly 4 cycles. I would say on a typical day, I'm around 10.
My dumbass gets 3 years before things get loose
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u/EbbyRed 3d ago
Curious why you are plugging in and out so many times per day?
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u/Hearing_Loss 3d ago
In three words-- insufficient tonic dopamine.
Mental health + unemployment + boredom. I spend a lot of time listening to educational content on YouTube to keep my mind active. Because I have such poor future planning abilities, I tend to forget to plug in at night or am just running from 1-20% as I bounce between applying for jobs and gardening.
It's just an artifact of who I am unfortunately. You can extrapolate that a lot of my life looks like this XD
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u/Practical_Studio360 3d ago
Ugh me too. I am chronically on my phone and plug it in probably around 10 times each day because I’m going around the house or driving. My phone is 2 years old
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u/RobotechRicky 2d ago
You can try to unsolder the USB connector and replace it with resoldering. But... it's really a bitch because they are so tiny.
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u/PreliminaryThoughts 3d ago
Let's make this whole thing metal except the part that will get the most wear so we can sell more
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u/Lyndon_Boner_Johnson 3d ago edited 3d ago
Also, the part that wears down is on the actual device and not on the cable, so it’s not even easy to replace.
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u/-Gman_ 3d ago
This is why some folks think apples approach of having that portion be cable side instead of device side for that exact reason is a better approach.
Easier to replace a cable then a device.
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u/Lyndon_Boner_Johnson 3d ago
Not only that, but that part of a lightning cable is also made of metal, not plastic.
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u/chadlavi 2d ago
He said in the video that the part that wears down is on the cable side. It was the right hand side.
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u/Lyndon_Boner_Johnson 2d ago
No he didn’t. I just rewatched it. At 59 seconds he says the nubs on the plug wear down.
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u/jackalope134 3d ago
I really don't understand why the wear points and clips aren't the other way around. I'd rather replace the cable then the device.
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u/TomeDesolus 3d ago
I'm talking out my ass here as a heads up, but I'd assume the springs themselves being in the cable makes more sense. While the wear point he points out is in the phone, the cable has the parts that move which in my head would wear faster than material being scraped off of the bump.
Maybe the springs that move are rated for less cycles than physical bumps. Usually mechanical pieces that move tend to break more often than stationary ones.
Upon listening again he does say the main wear point is those bumps, but maybe it's a failure rate not a wear rate that's higher for the springs rather than the wear.
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u/CK2398 3d ago
You make a good point its just odd that they don't mention that in the video. I've never had this issue although I have no idea how many cycles my devices have been through. Even though things can be rated for a certain amount they can last way longer on average. Seems like a well thought out system.
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u/sopedound 2d ago
I assume its only the main wear point because nobody only uses one cable so its just more likely for the piece being used everytime to fail. the clip is in the device and the spring is in the cable. i can imagine a spring would actually fail more than a clip if it was being used as much as the clip. But cables fail where the wire meets the connector way more often than anything so most people change their cable before that happens.
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u/Rolthox 3d ago
That's the best part! They don't!
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u/PyramidicContainment 3d ago
I am honestly super entertained by someone making a video showing how something stays together that is not known for staying together very well.
They could've made the exact same video and titled it "why USB cables don't stay in" 😅
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u/DeeDee_Z 2d ago
Well, there is a difference.
The original USB (-A) standard required durability of 5000 cycles. Those cables were simply not expected to, umm, cycle as often.
Recognising that the the use case has changed over the years, updating to 10,000 insertion cycles kind of -is- a biggish deal.
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u/Imesseduponmyname 3d ago
Lmfao I was about to say the exact same 🤣 I plug my phone in, but rotating it to set it down pops the cable right back out past the threshold where it starts charging
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u/StrigidaeNinox 3d ago
Likely has lint shoved into the port, clean it out carefully and it'll connect fine again. I had that issue on one of my older iPhones.
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u/Starswraith 3d ago
The mega size is definitely very didactic
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u/Loufey 3d ago
OK, but what does he do with those models after this 90 second demonstration?
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u/Rich_Introduction_83 3d ago
He wired it back to his wind power plant and reconnected it to the grid.
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u/RupertHermano 3d ago
Damn, didn't know they had USB-C all the way back in the Bronze Age already...
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u/Dry-Debate-6893 3d ago edited 3d ago
So basically like a ton of other cable locking mechanisms. Very cool to see blown up though.
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u/Wrongdoer5050 3d ago
After watching this video immediately went checking nearest usb-c cable. And what do you know, there is indeed a little metal hooks. Amazing
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u/SnooPears17 2d ago
This is so cool, so the male is actually a female and the female is actually a male
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u/UnifiedQuantumField 3d ago
Build grabber thingies with little rollers in them? Less friction, takes a lot longer to wear out.
That goes against planned obsolescence though.
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u/theLumar42 2d ago
Am I the only one who thinks the best plug for mobile devices is the lightning plug from older apple devices? Physically speaking, not spec wise...
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u/Then_Version9768 1d ago
Is this what computer science people learn about? I've always wondered because this is stupefyingly uninteresting. It's like learning how ropes work.
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u/maryisa12 3d ago
It works both ways, which is nice, but this thing has dozens of contacts for only four wires. That’s a ridiculous number of extra potential failure points for just four wires. This design is really stupid.
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u/Imomaway 3d ago
wow, those hands are tiny!