Best Easy Phone Upgrade Ever!

My USB-C charging and headphone socket had become unreliable.

I look after my phones and have never broken, loosened or otherwise adversely affected a charging socket before but had to assume that’s what had happened because it was difficult to charge (long leads that put a bit of weight on the connection would fail part way into the night, etc) headphones wouldn’t work unless I held the connector pressed into the phone and using it in the car just meant the lead fell out while driving. Plugging anything in just felt “loose” like it wasn’t really making a confident connection.

Eventually I decided to use a big magnifying glass, superbright torch and skinny tweezers to see whether I could bend the pins out on the connector and make them provide a better contact with the plug and offer more friction to hold plugs in.

When I had a look in there I found the culprit – pocket lint! I assume it was collected in my pocket loosely, but then repeatedly compressed and compacted into the socket by pushing in a plug! It was very dense and hard.

Some of it came out with compressed air but a solid chunk on one end of the long, thin connector was very difficult to shift – it even felt like it was a plastic part of the socket. Eventually with a stiff piece of thin wire (snipped from a stiff metal brush) I managed to free all the bits and every plug on every device and cable I have now gently ‘clicks’ into the phone and works perfectly!