Lightning Fail

If you don’t hate Apple’s lightning connector yet, it’s almost sure that you will. Should you snap off the tip in your device you will find it impossible to remove. (Don’t take it to the apple store, they will just offer to sell you a new device.) The cables tend to break if kinked or pulled. Even if you’re consistently gentle, you could develop corroded contacts that prevent the device from charging.

Another failure I have encountered: pocket lint. It seems the female lightning connector on the bottom of the iPhone is just the perfect size for getting lint stuck in it. Because the opening is so thin, it takes a very small tool to get the lint out. In my case, a pair of static-safe tweezers I use for placing SMD components was small enough.

iPhone, Lint, and Tweezers
This was the first of three chunks removed.

I have never had this problem with any other connector. That includes USB mini, USB micro and Apple’s 30-pin connector, all of which have traveled in my pockets for years without incident. I haven’t had those others snap off in the device or become corroded, either, but both have happened to me with the lightning connector. Even the name is bad, since Apple also uses the thunderbolt interface, producing confusion. Sadly, I don’t think we can expect a change in connector for new iPhones. With Apple’s revenues missing expectations, they’ll need to sell lots of replacement cables and phones.