How long do your cell phone chargers last?
 

I bought one last night from Best Buy and it is already doing the Not Charging, Charging, Not Charging nonsense. I have been keeping them plugged in as much as possible, unplugging the other end when necessary, and carrying the cord with it, still plugged in. I have not unplugged this cord since purchasing it last night!
One roommate said his iPhone's chargers lasted him years, but I am pretty sure the longest any have lasted in my Android is a month. It is two and a half years old. I have considered replacing the charging port, but often when I fixed my laptop, something tiny and fragile broke. I don't want that happening with my phone!

I have used wireless chargers, but the "fast charger" barely maintains my battery if I am actually using it, but after a couple of weeks they also started doing the Not Charging, Charging, Not Charging nonsense.

My previous phone used to last about a week on its battery, but gradually it went down to less than a day - awkwardly, in lumps and with exceptions.
Then it started resetting itself for no reason.
Also the USB connector did not fit really nice anymore...

Long story short; dirt in the connector was shorting the power bearing contacts!
One good clean and it lasted a week again. Maybe that helps you too.

A 2.5 year old phone? I would bet the battery is very near end of life (approaching 1000 cycles). And yes, dirt and corrosion will cause problems on the charging contacts, but you problem sounds like a loose wire or the charger is not powerful enough and the voltage is sagging under load so the phones charge controller shuts down.

The cords last a year or 2.
I have not had a 120v to 5v USB power supply go bad.
If the phone turns off for no reason you probably have a bad battery.

Dunno. Use my PC to charge most things.

Oh, wait...there's the tablets. They have AC USB chargers. They've been going for years. Occasionally have to replace a dead USB cable though.

Every one of my chargers outlasted their respective phones, and I never had problems with charging. I follow simple rules:
- never leave charger in AC outlet ( ?wall socket?) when not in use
- do not use (phone, walk, surf etc) while charging
- Plug and unplug softly, keep socket clean
- Full charge, full discharge
- do not bend cables

Mine last forever. The only thing I've noticed since I got an iPad is that the phone chargers won't charge it because it needs more oomph (that's tech jargon for amperage).

My life is un-troubled by such things, but in general —with consumer electronics— things tend to fail out of the box or at the end of life after a long stretch of reliability.

Your part hadn't achieved burn-in.

If it wasn't this way you wouldn't have received a warranty with it.

They always outlast the phone. Never had to replace an OEM one.

About 1/4 of my cords fail after a few months of use, and the rest mostly keep working. My wife's micro USB connector on her phone stopped working, likely from mechanical damage, so she just uses wireless charging now. That works fine since the phone can go a day on a charge, and she charges it nightly.

My iPhone cables always seem to be quite fragile and become intermittent after 3 months or so

I have found that aftermarket IPhone cords are not worth buying. The oem ones are expensive but last a long time.

Especially the cheap Chinese ones. Ours maybe charged the iPad once successfully and 10 times it did not. 3 whole euros in the bin.
We finally got a decent replacement from TP-Link that seems to work fine.
The original Apple cable lasted just over a year, so OEM is not everything either.

Funny, I've never had any problems with Apple cords either. I *have* had issues with aftermarket suppliers though and have learned to only buy quality.

My wife has an iPhone and her cable has lasted 30 months so far, charging almost every day. Perhaps it is how they are treated?

I don't know about that. Mine's maybe 8 years old - bought used, the model was released in '08 - and still works fine. Charger is the same USB one I use for the tablets - I think it came with the ASUS tablet, so it's been around for several years.

You mean like the situation where the cables are actually used as intended traveling with you from car to apt. To your motel to work?

My travel cord isn’t going to set perfectly stationary in one place at a dock, I wouldn’t need it if that’s all it did.

My blackberry cord lasted the life of the phone being used much more aggressively, why are OEM iPhone cables so much more fragile?

On that subject the only iPhone cord I have that has lasted is aftermarket and 3” long OEM Apple always get flakey by the phone end

There is a good chance all of my cables were made in China.

I used rubber bands to hold my phone to a wireless charger in my car. It seemed like I needed to trade in my Otter Box for one with a inductive plate, although I just bought a battery case.

I like my $20 Wal-Mart wireless charging stand way more than my $40 Target round one, but again, after a week or two, I had the same issues. I wish I could try this: https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Wirel.../dp/B00NT5LDJ0, but I could purchase a phone that charges for $80.

There is probably a decent alternative that costs much less.

Inductive charging supposedly degrades batteries.

Know Your Mobile has a page called "Clean your dirty hole!" and says, if you have an iPhone, jam a toothpick in there, and pry out the lint, boogers, and space trash, but if you have an Android, "the internals of a microUSB port has more delicate connectors that can easily bend or snap off under too much pressure." They recommend 5-6 short bursts of compressed air at an angle, then shine a flashlight in and make sure everything is out.

I am going to try that and report back, but so far, nobody else seems to have the same problem.

My battery did not last long enough when it was new. It rarely lasted one day at drill with light usage. Samsung decided to make the phone thinner and lighter, instead of having a good battery, but it must be worse now.

The battery case worked for about three months. The phone charged fine during that time and it was great to hit a button on the back and fully recharge my phone without plugging in, but as a case it was horrible. It is hard plastic and slipped out of my fingers periodically. When that happened the case usually came apart and the phone came loose. I think there was too much movement on the connector; it stopped charging, so I went back to my Otterbox.

Since I am often told that I absolutely need to use the original Samsung cable, even though it died two years ago, I went to the Verizon store, and declined to pay $29 for a five foot cable with a logo. Dollar General sold a four-foot Duracell cable for $7, but unfortunately, my phone did not like it. I bought it and started driving to Show Low. My phone chirped more and more as I drove, and the cable slipped out of the phone while I was sleeping. I exchanged it the next day and the replacement stays in just fine, but I have still had difficulty charging.

I would take my phone to a repairman if there were one in Page or Show Low. I bought a refurbished phone like mine to use so I could repair my original, but the order never said they were mailing it. Everything I have ordered from Amazon has been shipped by UPS to my house, but if they use USPS I need to give them my P.O. box number.

When I saw it was coming through the post office I contacted the seller, but they said they could not change orders, so they will refund my money.

Fortunately, I was able to find original Samsung cables for $16.43 on Amazon.

We will see if those do any better.

Came home this evening to find a note on the table that the iPad won't charge as the cable won't go in, and indeed it didn't.

Cleaned out the Dirty Hole and all was good :)

The original Samsung cable connects like a champ, but does not work as well as the $7 Duracell cable that I bought a couple of weeks back. At least it does not tell me to use my original Samsung cable, right?

"Charging"
"Charging slowly. Please use the original Samsung cable."
"Not charging."

When it starts doing that when I am ten feet away I will give up and use another cable. I had my phone plugged in for the duration of my five-hour drive home, but with the sound off, so I would not hear it chiming repeatedly. Fortunately, I did not hear it vibrating. When I arrived, I saw that it was at 65%. I messaged Mom to let her know I was home safely and went to ask a friend how she was doing, but my phone turned off.

You know, low battery.

I plugged in and was at 61%, but usually when it actually warns me my battery is low, it is magically 15% higher once I plug in.

My phone is as high maintenance as I am!

I am using an old Samsung Galaxy for 4 years. The original charger is working fine for me. Last year I got a 2.1 Amps charger (though it would fast charge my cell). it worked fine for 5 minutes and then crushed. I decided to use my original charger forever and I am up with it.

However, my original cable is damaged. Now I transfer data via Bluetooth.

The power supplies them selves last a very long time.
The cords not so much.
Avoid the chargers with integrated cord.

I like the idea of eliminating the possibility of the cable-to-base connection going bad, but I also like the idea of using one cord at home and in the car and leaving a small car charger in the car, and a small wall charger at home, instead of the weird big car charger with wall outlet prongs.

I started using a 4,200 battery unit case for $19 November second. The charging system seemed to work well. I had never been able to go all day without recharging my phone, even if I did not use it. My battery would be low around lunchtime, I hit the button on the back, and I was good for the rest of the day. The problem was that it was a terrible case, hard plastic that slipped out of my fingers a few times; if my phone fell on its screen the case would have done nothing to protect it. When the case fell, it separated in two pieces, my phone slid out, and after a few falls, my phone stopped charging.

I was able to slide the phone in just fine while the pieces were together, so that design did not make sense to me.

This case arrived Wednesday the seventh: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

$40 for 3,500 battery units, so 40% of the battery value of the other one, but it wraps around the phone, fully protecting it, unlike the previous one, although it is the same hard plastic, so at some point it will slip out of my fingers, and probably dent instead of absorbing shock like my Otterbox. It is also two pieces, the front snaps onto the back. Many reviewers complained they could not remove it. I dunno, I never tried, but it does not seem like it would not be a problem. I am just hoping that it does not come apart on its own.

So far, it is charging just fine with non-Samsung cables.

I've been lucky so far-my 16 year-old Samsung and original charger both work just fine-I did have to replace the battery pack somewhere around the 14th year though...

Don't really want to modernize-I can use my laptop for any Internet/Computing/Entertainment needs, and a portable Smartphone is too big and fragile for my liking. My 'soapbar' takes calls, texts and voicemails just fine, fits on my belt and takes a beating. I don't even want another Samsung-the new ones have fully-integrated 'power packs' that can't be replaced at all, when it stops holding a charge you throw it away. This offends me beyond words... I'll keep my old phone until the circuit boards turn to dust.

I felt the same way about my '93 Festiva-and it made it to 30 before it perished.

My phone froze the other day with the screen on. With every previous phone, I would pop the battery. All of my laptops, too. Supposedly, I can reboot my phone by holding down the power and volume down buttons, but if it responded to that, it should have responded to holding down the power button.

I could not do anything but wait for the battery to die, plug in, and then it worked fine.

If I decide my current battery requires replacement I will replace it, with a soldering iron if necessary.

I can not remember clearly but I think it was at least 9 months LOL, the cable always was broken off quickly.

I have had my second battery case for a couple of weeks and Samsung charging cable for a month. It is already starting to do the not charging-charging thing when I move the phone.

My iPhone chargers typically give up the ghost after a year or so. It's kinda frustrating. I've been using an extra long cable from the AT&T store for the last six months and it's been fantastic. The extra length is making me spoiled.

As for cigarette lighter adapters, I used one for about 5 years which I got for free from my previous job. We got two boxes of them and never could find them in our system to sell them. Manager was gonna toss them, so I grabbed one. As cheaply constructed as it was, it lasted a darn long time. I only recently replaced it.

In the 60s car's driver door armrests would erupt in cotton padding around the time most people traded in. The steering, OTOH, had hardly start to wear.

Solid, dense foam armrests on my Mustangs :D the vinyl would start to pull away from the backing on the seats before anything else looked bad.

I replaced my nearly four and a half year-old Samsung Galaxy S6 with a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S6 with a six-month warranty. So far, it works great, although the virtual keyboard likes to disappear while I am writing! (That happened nine times while I wrote this!)

That never happened with my Stratosphere 2! :)

I bought a replacement battery and daughterboard for $32 and will replace them today, but I have been using battery cases for perhaps a year. I may spend as much on those as I did on cables, but I watched a Linus Tech Tip video where he recommended Volta magnetic charging cables. They have interchangeable magnetic tips and I could use the same cable for my Android and my iPad, you just leave the tip in the device.

Well, the Volta is $27 on Amazon, plus $7 for shipping (unless you spend at least $60).

This one is $8.50, though: https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Cool-Co...rch&th=1&psc=1

I think I will give it a try!

I'd save those pennies for a newer phone. Get yourself something new enough that it has a USB-C connector. I expect that style of connecter to fair better.