Comment by tipperjones
12 hours ago
I've found the opposite, Lightning cables routinely failed for me and I haven't had a USB-C cable fail yet, and I've been using them for 7+ years.
Not sure if it's the connector or the build quality, but want to throw in the opposite experience.
The cables fail from bad design.
The connectors are great.
Aren't there high quality cables available? Eg from companies like Apple or Anker?
I struggle to understand why an Apple lightning cable would be more robust than an Apple thunderbolt cable...
Well at least the metal part of any type-C plug will inherently be more fragile due to the hollow design and manufacturing by stamping out of sheet metal. Whereas for Lightning, it’s a solid machined part.
But as soon as you get to the chip housing and the rest of the cable, it’s anyone’s game I suppose.
I just had to buy more type-C cables because all of mine are broken - always at the cable entering the connector, and I don't coil them tightly - but I've never used Lightning.
In case you don’t do this already, avoid:
- Pulling on the cable to unplug it, instead ensure you pull on the solid connector on the end.
- Bending at the point of the cable connector, resting the phone upright on the cable + connector when plugged in (e.g. in cup holder in a car) or stretching the cable too long that it causes a bend in the cable at the connector when plugged in.
There was a recent HN post about cable abuse and it said coiling too tight doesn’t itself damage cables (I will add I don’t like how it makes the cable get a memory and wants to kind of recoil itself all the time), but I think the action of too tight coiling incidentally puts more stress on where it joins the connector.