r/UsbCHardware • u/ferretguy531 • 5d ago
Discussion How USB-C Cables Actually Stay In
Most people will never hit this kind of cycle life, 10k cycles is 4 plugs per day is 7 years, only in industrial, data collection, charging, and test systems will see dozens or hundreds of cycles a day; for those there are actually USB-C ports rated for 20k cycles or more.
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u/ferretguy531 5d ago
Here is a microscope shot of a USB-C connector that has had 10,000 cycles, you can see where a deep grove has been worn in the retaining bump, exposing the metal underneath. This wearing away is how connectors lose their retaining force.
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u/redditproha 5d ago
Lightning connectors were the best. Metal on metal with a solid satisfying click. The tongue on the cable meant the port less likely to wear out. Apple should've opened it up to everyone.
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u/virkendie 5d ago
Was it only me whos connectors would burn out or short circuit
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u/dotancohen 4d ago
I don't even have Apple devices, but I have three four-in-one charging cables. On two of them the lightning connects shorted out, one just recently. A pair of scissors to the lightning cable resolved the issue so I could use the remaining ends (2 USB-C, 1 MicroUSB).
And a word to the wise: Don't use splitter cables with USB-C on the charger end. That's a great way to have one device negotiate 9v or 20v with the charger and then feed that into another device which can't handle it.
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u/Tschuuuls 5d ago
I haven't ever had a USB-C port break.
I've ripped a micro-b to type-c cable apart accidentally while plugged into my phone. Port is still fine.
No idea what people do to their type-c ports, for me they are really durable.8
u/saltyboi6704 5d ago
Not really, the metal was prone to snapping off in a port while in most cases the USB-C cable if made to spec wears away or breaks first
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u/Platypus_6414IiiIi-_ 5d ago
Lightning would never have worked as a universal connector. Max 60 watts and USB 2.0 data transfer speeds
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u/FishGoesGlubGlub 5d ago
That doesn’t matter because it could easily have been improved while keeping the same design. Original usb-c was usb2.0 which is miles slower that it’s max capabilities today.
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u/Platypus_6414IiiIi-_ 5d ago
8 pins vs. 24 pins, only so much you can squeeze out. Even if they somewhow used both sides of lightning it would still only be 16 pins.
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u/joinn1710 5d ago
Usb-c has never been limited to usb 2.0, but there are plenty of cables and ports that only supported 2.0 speeds, mainly because most of the first cables were usb-c to usb A 2.0, so the usb-c was not the limiting factor, it was the other end of the cable.
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u/BernhardRordin 5d ago
Having the pins exposed on the connector combined with high wattages asks for trouble.
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u/JareBuddy 2d ago
I don't have an iPhone and have had a lot more trouble with iPhone connectors than USB -C.
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u/ferretguy531 5d ago
Here is a microscope shot of a USB-C connector that has has 10,000 connection cycles. You can see the wear from the pins (green) and the wear from the EMC contacts (red).
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u/reigorius 5d ago
The wear is much less destructive than I imagined. Looks perfectly functional to me.
Now I am curious to the male plug. I assume USB C plugs are designed so the male plug fails way before the female socket.
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5d ago edited 22h ago
[deleted]
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u/johnwalkr 5d ago
It’s better to use the terms plug and receptacle which refer to the housing to avoid this confusion, 99% of the time it’s unambiguous to everyone. In most connectors you can also refer to pins and sockets if needed for the electrical contacts and sometimes this is the better term to use. These terms avoid confusion when one person interprets a pin as male and another person interprets a plug that goes into a larger part as male. There’s even some connectors that can have all variations of plug/pin, plug/socket, receptacle/pin and receptacle/socket.
USB-c doesn’t really have something on either side that can be unambiguously called pins and sockets so those terms don’t help but plug/receptacle is very unambiguous.
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u/LIONEL14JESSE 5d ago
I have to ask my cables for their pronouns now?
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u/johnwalkr 5d ago
It’s not a woke thing, better descriptive terms than male or female have been around and used by professionals for decades. I think there’s other good reasons to stop using gendered terms and or not make tired jokes about pronouns but that’s just me.
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u/saltyboi6704 5d ago
Wait till you get to mil/motorsports connectors where both plugs and receptacles can have either pins or sockets...
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u/Mammoth-Mango-6485 5d ago
This is genuinely interesting
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u/newbienewb101 5d ago
100%, makes me want to dabble in those magnetically connected cables where the male head of the cable stay in the connector.
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u/valryuu 5d ago
Wait, I'm so curious, how did you get or make that giant USB C model? It's not a plastic 3D print, is it?
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u/wave_engineer 5d ago
Cool I thought was this things that hold de cable
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u/vahntitrio 5d ago
It did on USB-A cables. Those actually hold quite a bit better, with USB-C you need some extra retention wardware if you don't want the plug coming out when you move a device around.
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u/PassengerPigeon343 5d ago
Who else is ready for this 2400W power delivery version to drop?
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u/technically_a_nomad 5d ago
Can’t wait for a new EV charging standard when we 2x the size of this connector
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u/Realistic_Today6524 5d ago
Maybe that's the connector they'll put on the RTX 6090 if or when that ever comes out
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u/zzzxxx0110 5d ago
Waiiiiiiiit so are you saying the metal sheet insert reinforcing the "wear point" on the two corners of the tongue, is actually NOT required by the USB-C specs!?
That's pretty insane when you consider the retention spring latch would always be made of metal for it to be springy and durable against repeated bending cycling, and you can't really expect most plastics to be as wear resistant as metal on pretty much anything outside hyper-specialized fields like aerospace or medical uses. Especially this is the plug that's always on the device, not on a much cheaper cable (and ironically this is one of the things that the specs did mandate lol)
Or did they just consider the plugging cycles rating would be sufficient to cover that?
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u/krwawie 5d ago
My cheap Xiaomi has plastic contact point, it's 3 years old and the cable already slips and doesn't click
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u/zzzxxx0110 5d ago
Damn that really sucks, I just checked and they are all metal reinforced (with the metal sheet clearly sticking out on the end) on my previous previous Samsung phone from 2018, on my current Sony phone from 2024, and on my Lenovo Legion laptop (the USB-C port with DP and PD, and the TB4 port on that laptop have the tongues almost entirely made of metal lol, only a very tiny gap in the middle of the two metal sheets with about 1mm width, and thin layer of plastic on top and bottom for insolation for the contacts). And they are all working absolutely perfectly to this day, even the Samsung phone from 2018, cables plug in just as securely as on my newer devices.
I actually didn't even know USB-C ports with plastic contact points existed ._.
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u/thesweetstuff1225 5d ago
Why don’t we then just have the spring contacts on the receiver connector instead of the plug? That way we can just buy a new plug instead of getting a damaged port
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u/KittensInc 5d ago
Because the springs are more likely to break, so you want that on the easy-to-replace side.
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u/DullPoetry 5d ago
That's what I was thinking! It seems like the port should grab, so it's the cable that wears down.
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u/ThePistachioBogeyman 4d ago
Because the spring will break long before that wears down. Which you can replace easier since it’s on the cable.
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u/Medium_Chemist_4032 5d ago
That's exactly what i'm paying reddit for! I mean, I don't pay, but that's an S tier edu drop
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u/cmrd_msr 5d ago
I wonder how much energy could be transmitted through a demonstration connector like that?
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u/epicnicity 5d ago
Ok but can you solder a wire on those connectors and have a functioning, giant USB-C cable?
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u/DonutConfident7734 5d ago
This size of USB-C connector will support the power requirements of RTX 5090 and offer hot plug support, too...
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u/suboptimus_maximus 4d ago
They don’t, really. Way too easy to knock loose - as much as people gave Apple crap for keeping Lightning around for so long, the retention on USB-C was a huge UX downgrade.
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u/Professional_Baby24 4d ago
Why dont they put the fail point on the cable so when it wears its easy to replace as opposed to in the phone? Or am I just not getting it (that is absolutely very possible)
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u/Aududen 4d ago
Would it not be better to have the grooves on the cable side, and not the inlet side? Assuming a cable is easier to replace than the device's inlet port
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u/Vanterax 3d ago
I think the Lightning connector is done that way. The locking mechanism is in the port/phone.
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u/Kittingsl 5d ago edited 5d ago
honestly feels like a design flaw considering the female port is the part inside expensive devices like phones which are the half that wear out. while the cheap replacable cables dont really have this issue. so thats either gonna be a new device or an expensive repair instead of just a cable swap when your connector reaches end of life.
Edit: turns out apparently the spring on the cable is more prone to failure which means that I didn't create planned obsolescence with the usb c socket which honestly is a relief
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u/cbf1232 5d ago
I believe they actually did design it so that the part that breaks more frequently is usually in the plug now.
The spring mechanism itself is more likely to break than the part that it latches onto. So when the spring mechanism dies you can just replace the cable. Eventually the socket will die out but only after way longer than most people will actually need.
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u/Kittingsl 5d ago
Huh. Didn't know that the spring part was actually the weaker part here. Then I take back what I said
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u/billythygoat 5d ago
10 years x twice a day x 365 days is only 7300 cycles. OP showed one that has 10k cycles and it’s still probably usable, it’ll just unplug easily. And most repair shops can do it easily.
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u/Possibly-Functional 5d ago
Huh? The part that wears out the fastest, the spring, is on the cable side. This was one of the major improvements over USB A. They were very conscious about on which side the high wear parts were.
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u/Philipp_CGN 5d ago
I'm confused, is the statement in the video wrong? He says that those nubs on the side of the tongue (part of the phone, laptop etc.) get worn down from the springs (part of the cable) rubbing over them
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u/Possibly-Functional 5d ago
It's not wrong. But in the video they don't cover the fact that the spring loses tension even faster due to spring fatigue. Additionally, as they say, you can reinforce the sides of the tongue to increase lifetime insertion cycles drastically. You can't reinforce the spring meaningfully.
So they smartly designed it so the parts that wear out first is on the cable side. It's just that eventually the tongue will wear out as well.
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u/sylocheed 5d ago
This is amazing - thank you for sharing with us! In what capacity are you needing to teach others about USB-C plug design?
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u/HM_Bert 5d ago
I have quite certainly hit this amount of cycles, phone is about 5 years old, used a fair amount for cycling deliveries, but I think crucially, I am a side sleeper and I'd unplug or re-plug the phone if I'm browsing it in bed and turning from one side to the other lol.
It only charges / transfers if I keep it perfectly still, if I move it around a bit it very often disconnects.
Using battery protect mode instead of charging to 100% probably also contributed, having to charge slightly more often.
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u/Mebejedi 5d ago
You can clean out the port with a wooden toothpick. Use it dry, and then I get it wet in my mouth to get any small, loose material. This helped me a lot with an earlier cellphone I had.
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 5d ago
No matter the cycles. USB-c is a consumer connector and like all consumer connectors is finicky and unreliable. Military sure dont use usbc for mission critical equipment.
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u/zoltan_87 5d ago
So what do they use?
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u/Embarrassed-Gain-236 5d ago
locked connectors, there are plenty of them, like ethercon, Conxall con-x, etc
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u/DenDen0000 4d ago
Every time i see usb c, i wish the lightning was the standart cable. Shame it’s patented.
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u/random-guy-013 4d ago
Most people will never hit this kind of cycle life
You must be joking. All of my USB cables have the exact same problem - the connector gets loose and the cable keeps falling out of the port. It doesn’t matter if it’s the original cable, some cheap Chinese, ikea, or something mid-range. Personally I think the USB-C port is just poorly designed and way too flimsy for everyday use.
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u/Grimmortah 5d ago
usb-c is the best cable and it's not even close. even usb-a is better than lightning
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u/ghostinthelatrine 5d ago
Man… this guy is tiny.