How Dirty Charging Ports Cost Me Three Phones...

Today, I had a quick scare with my cellphone. Out of nowhere, it stopped charging—even though it had been charging just fine the day before. I did notice that the connection felt a bit loose when I plugged in the charger, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Since I had just recently bought this phone, I started to panic, thinking I’d have to shell out money for yet another replacement. Thankfully, I figured out the problem, and now I'm going through my old “broken” devices.

Over the past year, I bought about three phones, each having the same issue: the charging port felt wobbly, and eventually the phone would stop charging entirely. The problem seemed to get worse with each device, and I just didn’t have the energy to deal with it. I never got around to taking any of them to a repair shop either. At the time, I was working over 80 hours a week between the bakery and construction, so my focus was just on getting through each day. For context, I usually buy phones that are a step or two above the lowest tier—nothing too fancy. My budget usually falls in the $200 to $350 range. I never go for high-end models because, in my line of work, phones tend to get damaged or wear out pretty quickly anyway.

As it turns out, this time the phone itself was fine—the issue was just the charging port being dirty. I noticed some buildup inside, so I tried cleaning it out and reconnecting the charger. At first, nothing happened. But as I kept cleaning and removing more gunk, the connection became less wobbly, and eventually, the phone started charging perfectly.

That little win made me curious, so I dug out my box of old phones—all the ones I thought had died from charging issues. I started scraping out the debris from their ports, and to my surprise, most of them had the same problem: the ports were just clogged. They were filled with lint, dust, seeds, and in some cases, even dried paint.

Honestly, I’m both annoyed and relieved. Annoyed that I might’ve tossed perfectly good phones over something so simple and spent money on new ones—and relieved to know I can probably revive them now with just a little bit of cleaning. Luckily I felt the need to do a thorough look at my charging port because if not, I probably would have bought a new phone. lol

I suppose I saved myself a few hundred dollars and also have access to my old devices that I can use as extra storage space for some files or use them with the WiFi. Such craziness.