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De-gunking an iPhone Charging Port

Bart said:
My iPad will only charge if the lightning connector is put into the port one-way i.e. if I take it out and rotate it 180 degrees it won’t charge and I don’t get the charging symbol top right of screen.
I have tried this with various cables and it is totally consistent.
No amount of poking, wiping or vacuuming makes any difference.
It’s obviously not a disaster but means I have to check I’ve done it right every time I try to charge.
Anyone else experienced/fixed this?
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In all likely this is due to a tiny amount of rust on the lightning cable. I had similar with a cable in my car and resolved it with a small file.
 
Mark Packer said:
In my experience this is normally down to fluff from one's pocket.

I've found a wooden toothpick to be the most effective thing. I find it best to do the cleaning with the port upwards and the best natural light possible. Try and use the toothpick to gently scrape around all the internal surface and (rounded) corners. Eventually, you'll dislodge a small amount of fluff and then go round it once more and blow into the socket to get rid of anything thats loose. At that point you're done.

I've had to do a couple of times with my phone and it's always worked and always been a very small amount of fluff indeed but enough to prevent the full engaement of the contacts necessary for charging.
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This; and Naptha, aka 'Swann's lighter fluid' is a brilliant solvent to clean all kinds of things, that leaves no deposit, & available at most newsagents. Even to us non-smokers.
Isopropyl alcohol == equally good/even better:, just not so readily available.
 
julifriend said:
In all likely this is due to a tiny amount of rust on the lightning cable. I had similar with a cable in my car and resolved it with a small file.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply but I have tried various cables that work ’both ways‘ on other family ipads and they only work one way on mine, so the problem must be in the iPad port.
Maybe there’s some rust in there but I have tried pretty hard to clean the port several times.
 
Bart said:
My iPad will only charge if the lightning connector is put into the port one-way i.e. if I take it out and rotate it 180 degrees it won’t charge and I don’t get the charging symbol top right of screen.
I have tried this with various cables and it is totally consistent.
No amount of poking, wiping or vacuuming makes any difference.
It’s obviously not a disaster but means I have to check I’ve done it right every time I try to charge.
Anyone else experienced/fixed this?
Click to expand...
Try a dental Tepe brush- the purple ones are nice and fat. Bit of alchohol or contact cleaner if you have it.

The cables contacts are rubbish anyway - try a new one. Ikea ones are good or Anker brand from Amazon. The contacts are duplicated each side of the lightning plug if it only charges one way round normally it’s the cable.
 
Impacted lint can be very hard to remove. As above, a pin has worked for me. When I had a tiny stone lodged inside the charger port, I only got it out by banging the phone vertically on a table with moderate force. It was a last, desperate move as prying & hooking couldn't make it budge. I was astonished to see the stone on the table after a single strike.
 
Can only second these, really. One point on Sean’s suggestion above, though: “Servisol” is a brand-name - what you need is Contact Cleaner or Electronic Cleaning Solvent. The company makes other cleaning solutions and some of them are not suitable for use on electrical contacts. Farnell/CPC/RS-online will sell it mail-order.

Agree that the worst brand-name Apple cables are the ones Apple provides. Ikea, Belkin and anyone else with a name you’ve heard of will sell you a better quality cable.

For the USB-C sockets used on all recent Androids, modern iPads, and the latest iPhone, only pins are small enough to get in to the “moat” part of the socket, where the fluff likes to live.
 
I use a carefully crafted cocktail stick whittled down to a narrow blade. Best not to use metal in an electrical socket. Then brush out with a sable hair (quite stiff) artists paint brush.

a wad of compressed pocket fluf is usually the cause. I find the contacts of the lightning plugs fail rather than the iphone sockets.
 
This type of interdental brush would be perfect (Amazon). Non-ferrous and will not scratch the fragile contacts.

PS Again I urge real caution in sticking anything metal/conductive into a smartphone USB or Lightening socket. I’m prepared to bet a modern iPhone or equivalent is never really ‘off’ even when powered down. Certainly when working on them the very first thing one does after cracking the case open is to disconnect the battery. That is the only way to remove charge from the mainboard. I can’t say for sure whether the USB or Lightning connector is always powered, but given it can sense a PSU even when “powered off” I suspect it is.
 
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Tony L said:
This type of interdental brush would be perfect (Amazon). Non-ferrous and will not scratch the fragile contacts.
Click to expand...

yes i can recommend those for both my teeth, and for the socket on the iPhone my wife has for work. On our current Samsung personal phones i have never had need to clean the socket in this way. My previous Samsung did have a faulty socket replaced.
 
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Try not to be too heavy-handed. I also had a problem with the charging port which I exacerbated by using a pin to scoop out some lint, which resulted in damaging a couple of pins inside the port…

Apple said that replacing the port is quite costly so I ended up charging wirelessly.
 
I've found the sim-card removal tool that apple provide is ideal for hooking fluff out of the charging port. have to do it every few weeks - my pockets seem to be a big fluff collection device!
 
droodzilla said:
Same here, as a matter of fact. I'm hoping that a thorough de-gunking will fix that problem too.
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If it's an iphone 8 or newer, a cheap wireless charger will solve the problem permanently, without the need for a new port or regular de-fluffing.

I got a Bellkin one delivered same-day and it works a treat, even with the protective case still in place.
 
You can buy port-bungs, e.g. these on Amazon. Worth doing if, like me, you charge wirelessly and only use the port occasionally for headphones/line out.
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
Graham B said:
If it's an iphone 8 or newer, a cheap wireless charger will solve the problem permanently, without the need for a new port or regular de-fluffing.

I got a Bellkin one delivered same-day and it works a treat, even with the protective case still in place.
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Thanks. I'm seriously considering this option.
 
it is a shame more phones do not have pogo pin charging like my Samsung XCover 5. Pogo pins are just 2 contacts at the base of the phone and you place in a dock that connects to the two contacts. "Never" wear out.
 
droodzilla said:
Thanks. I'm seriously considering this option.
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They are a lot less hassle and a permanent fix. Once you de-gunk the port a few times they tend to get wobbly and unreliable, and the only way to fix that is a new port. If you don’t have Apple or another suitable shop nearby, you can get ports for diy replacement just like batteries, but they are a lot more complicated to swap out, so I gave up and went with the £15 Belkin wireless thing.
 
Graham B said:
If it's an iphone 8 or newer, a cheap wireless charger will solve the problem permanently, without the need for a new port or regular de-fluffing.

I got a Bellkin one delivered same-day and it works a treat, even with the protective case still in place.
Click to expand...
I’ve got an iPhone 11 and didn’t know ! Thanks.
 
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