USB-C port cleanout

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of waking up to realize that my phone had not charged all night. Turns out, the fix is pretty easy.

If you do not care to read (or about) all the words and explanations, feel free to skip to the SHORT VERSION

BACKGROUND

I charge my phone every night. I don’t know if I should, and I certainly don’t need to, but I do. Habit I guess. Well lately I just haven’t been able to plug in my charger well. That sounds silly, but I could really tell that I had to jam it in extra hard and it did not seem to catch. All too often the cord would fall out at the lightest touch.

This was very frustrating, especially when the cord had fallen out and I didn’t realize it. Ending up in a phone that wasn’t fully charged in the morning.

SOLUTION

This turned out to be embarrassingly simple to mitigate. I straightened out a staple, [I really needed something tiny and I couldn’t find a needle or a pin (because I didn’t look hard)] and just shoved it into the USB-C port on my phone and drug it around. The amount of dust that I dredged out of there was astounding. I really couldn’t believe the mountain of dust and lint that came out.

I thought to myself that that had to be what was causing the charging cord to not go in adequately. So I excitedly tried to plug the cord in and it still didn’t catch and I was pissed. But I knew I had to have made progress so I started again with the staple. Even more dust and lint came out!

This time the resultant pile was K2 to the previous Everest. And now the plug and port work like I remember them working when I first got the phone.

NEXT STEPS

• now that I know that dust and lint get jammed in there I should be more careful, but I’m exceedingly linty (based on my bellybutton collection center) and so I’ll just have to keep it in mind

SIDE NOTES

• I was ready to give up on this phone and USB-C altogether because I can remember my last phone doing the same thing
• I am pretty sure it cannot be good for any electrical device to have a piece of metal scraped along the contacts used for charging…so remember my disclaimer

WHAT I LEARNED

• my phone collects a lot of dust and lint in my pocket

REFERENCE

• N/A

SHORT VERSION

To avoid tl;dr enjoy this instead:

• Use something very small to dredge out your USB-C port (I used a staple)

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