iPhone replacement

December 4, 2015 11:30 PM

Hi, My iPhone 6's charging assembly has mostly stopped working, and this coincides with a recent thought that I should try to spend idle time thinking rather than browsing. I have several questions --

1. Can my phone's charging assembly be repaired for relatively cheap?

2. If not, can I get a phone that works on the same plan as the iPhone? I'm on my parents' joint plan, which presumably includes the iPhone surcharge.

3. Can anyone recommend a phone that allows internet usage without inviting it? Ideally I'd like something that wouldn't tempt me to spend my time browsing.

Thanks.

posted by uninformative to Technology (6 answers total)

It's very likely that lint has collected inside the Lightning port (where you plug the charger cable in), and a minute with a toothpick or paper clip is all you need to fix it.
posted by xil at 12:23 AM on December 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

2nding the lint issue. Don't trust just looking in there, get a bright flashlight and a toothpick.

My husband had trouble with his (droid) for months and got more and more annoyed when I told him it was lint. Until finally I took his phone against his will, put it under a light and yanked tons of crap out of the charge port. (He's a programming engineer, too.)

If that doesn't work, check your chargers too by trying a friend's or getting a new one. Then you should also be able to call and possibly get a quote to fix the charging port if that is actually the problem. Also, if you're paying for the iPhone monthly with the plan, you still owe the balance even if you don't use the phone as far as I know.
posted by Crystalinne at 1:11 AM on December 5, 2015

Are you using an official Apple Lightning cable? A friend of mine noticed his non-Apple cable recently stopped working. Lightning cables have a chip in them to identify themselves and there's a cat-and-mouse game with the knockoff artists. Apple continually adds software to lock out non-approved charging cables.
posted by JoeZydeco at 5:45 AM on December 5, 2015

I was recently having trouble with the charging cable popping out of my iPhone 6; I carefully used a toothpick to pull a huge wad of lint out of the port and now it's working perfectly. (I ended up doing the same for the headphone port, too, and now the on-cable volume buttons are working again as well.)
posted by sriracha at 6:13 AM on December 5, 2015

Also, look closely at the metal part of the lightning connector -- is there corrosion or anything else on it? I have buffed a little dark patch off of a temperamental one in the past and found that it magically started working again.
posted by bunji at 11:30 AM on December 5, 2015

Take it to the apple store and have them inspect it. They'll clean it for free. It's VERY easy to damage the pins in the connector yourself.

If that isn't the issue, they'll diagnose what it is for free.

I'm not super familiar with the construction of the 6, but on the 5 and 5s the charging connector was not a super easily swapable unit. Apple and most repair shops would replace the chassis or the entire phone to fix them. I tried to swap mine at one point and gave up because it was such an actual hassle.
posted by emptythought at 4:02 PM on December 5, 2015