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3 week old iPhone 5s & Bad 8 pin connector

mtbdudex

mtbdudex

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Aug 28, 2007
3,214
6,799
SE Michigan
I've had my 1Phone 5s 3 week's now, and a few days ago it developed quirky charging issues and then showed this screen

>>This is the cable that came with the phone, an Apple cable.
bas%2520cable%2520screen%2520shot.jpg


Being a just 3 week old phone, I immediately suspected something like latest iOS 7 update, etc.
Yet, the phone worked at home in my iHome bed clock radio, so suspected some interoperability issue with my iPhone and my car USB to audio headunit.

Since I work for a major car OEM, I spoke to my Audio dept, they suspected my cable immediately, and they were spot on.

Bad 8 pin connector - bad side
Look closely, 4th pin from top the electrical plating is "peeled back", the dark area
Bad%25208%2520pin%2520side.jpg


good side
Good%25208pin%2520side.jpg


So,I took this to the Novi Michigan Apple store, they swapped my cable free of charge....

Am I the only one with this issue?
Does not inspire in me good confidence of the 8 pin conenctor.
 
jonAppleSeed said:
Ouch, is that a scorch mark?
Click to expand...

Hard to see but not a scorch mark, rather the platted connector peeled back, and you are seeing the backside of the connector w/o the copper on it

from wiki
Lightning_pins.png

Pin 1 GND ground
Pin 2 L0p lane 0 positive
Pin 3 L0n lane 0 negative
Pin 4 ID0 identification/control 0
Pin 5 PWR power (charger or battery)
Pin 6 L1n lane 1 negative
Pin 7 L1p lane 1 positive
Pin 8 ID1 identification/control 1
Two differential pair lanes (L0p/n and L1p/n) may swap in IC of device connector (lanes don't swap if accessory identification chip connect to ID0 pin)
Click to expand...
 
Not to worry. It isn't common. I've only had one lightning cable go bad out of all the ones I have used (all OEM apple)
 
iErick said:
Not to worry. It isn't common. I've only had one lightning cable go bad out of all the ones I have used (all OEM apple)
Click to expand...

Erick, simple math; 1/x * 100% = failure rate.
How many, x, have you used.
What is your lightning cable failure rate ?
 
We have a few cables in different places in the house, and they all survive with no problems until I use it by my bed... That's the only place were the charger lies on the floor, so my guess is that dust or something gets pushed in with the charger and causes a small shortcircuit that fries the contact, because ever since I started wiping the contacts before inserting the charger there are no more damaged contacts...
 
wesk702 said:
Wow, your reading comprehension skills are phenomenal.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but it makes no sense to start a thread on a single incident and say it doesn't "inspire a good confidence in the 8 pin connector." If it happens 3 times, okay, but there will always be bad apples within any given products/accessories.

mtbdudex said:
Erick, simple math; 1/x * 100% = failure rate.
How many, x, have you used.
What is your lightning cable failure rate ?
Click to expand...

And how many have you used?
 
For being only a few weeks old, that cable / connector are filthy. Maybe moisture and / or oils are attacking the plug. Mine is just as old and looks new.

Also, the thread title is misleading. This issue has nothing to do with the 5s. It's a lightning cable issue. The title implies the connector on the phone is bad.
 
3 week old iPhone 5s & Bad 8 pin connector

Sharing my data here, not my intention to make any conclusion of perceived reliability of Apple products - way too soon and not enough data points, however for me:

  1. 50% failure rate within 3 weeks of usage, as 1 of 2 Apple cables failed in that time span
  2. One connector used soley in my car for USB charging to/from work
  3. One connector used @ home via hook-up to iMac for charging/photo download to Aperture

Therefore JayLenochiniMac, I'd say my experience is less than desirable.
Considering I had my iPhone 4 for close to 3 years, used phone/cable same exact conditions and zero issues.

Mr. Buzzcut - that connector was only in my car, it was really clean, possible you judged based on the photo.
Also, I cannot state if it's a lighting cable issue soley, can you grasp why?

iErick - so what is your failure rate for cables within said time frame?

My purpose of sharing is since the 5s is newly released, there might be some unique trend, maybe not.
After all, that is one purpose of these forums, to share fact based information with others.

Data is neither good or bad, it's just data.
It's how we analyze it, what we measure it against that good or bad can be determined.
 
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mtbdudex said:
Sharing my data here, not my intention to make any conclusion of perceived reliability of Apple products - way too soon and not enough data points, however for me:

  1. 50% failure rate within 3 weeks of usage, as 1 of 2 Apple cables failed in that time span
  2. One connector used soley in my car for USB charging to/from work
  3. One connector used @ home via hook-up to iMac for charging/photo download to Aperture

Therefore JayLenochiniMac, I'd say my experience is less than desirable.
Considering I had my iPhone 4 for close to 3 years, used phone/cable same exact conditions and zero issues.

Mr. Buzzcut - that connector was only in my car, it was really clean, possible you judged based on the photo.
Also, I cannot state if it's a lighting cable issue soley, can you grasp why?

iErick - so what is your failure rate for cables within said time frame?

My purpose of sharing is since the 5s is newly released, there might be some unique trend, maybe not.
After all, that is one purpose of these forums, to share fact based information with others.

Data is neither good or bad, it's just data.
It's how we analyze it, what we measure it against that good or bad can be determined.
Click to expand...

You can't honestly extrapolate one bad cable to a 50% failure rate.

And of course I judged from the photo. What other evidence did I have?
 
I had the same problem. My Mac would sync with my Retina iPad mini no problem, but developed a problem with my iPhone 5s. I brought in my Mac and iPhone 5s to the Genius Bar, they swapped out my phone in less than thirty minutes.

Perhaps it's time you exercise Apple's vaunted warranty protection.

Or go ahead and continue to whine in the MacRumors bboard where no one can do anything about it. It's your call.

Good luck.
 
mtbdudex said:
Erick, simple math; 1/x * 100% = failure rate.
How many, x, have you used.
What is your lightning cable failure rate ?
Click to expand...

Are you trying to imply that his cable failure rate can be extrapolated over a larger sample size?

My 2012 13" cMBP had an issue with the display hinge that required the display to be replaced. Does my "100% failure rate" mean anything in the grand scheme of things?
 
My 2 month iPad mini got totally destroyed by a connector going bad on the cable. The pins had turned black and somehow it caused the battery to swell and kill the system.

The iPad sits in the living room constantly in dry conditions. Apple were a bit dumbfounded as to how it happened but happily replaced the device and the cable.

A little worrying really but then all of my other lightning compatible devices have been just fine.
 
Twimfy said:
My 2 month iPad mini got totally destroyed by a connector going bad on the cable. The pins had turned black and somehow it caused the battery to swell and kill the system.
Click to expand...

How do you know it's not the other way around? It had a defective battery and when it swelled, it fried the connector and hence the cable?
 
Let's see... Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones, 14.1 million iPads, and an unknown number of iPods and additional cables in Q4 of 2013. Doing a quick search it's safe to say there are hundreds of millions of Lightning cables out there. Using the logic in this thread, based on my failure rate of zero for 10-ish cables I'm estimating the failure rate for all Lightning cables is 0%.

Apple should've had a good idea of what the failure rate would be before the first Lightning cable was built based on the design, materials, manufacturers, etc. If someone at ever Apple thinks, "Why are so many cables failing?" it's an unexpected and very bad thing. Someone will go to the woodshed and we would have heard about it. There are expected failures and unexpected failures, especially with dirty, scuffed, stained / scorched, abused cables.

But enough reason... Where's the class action lawsuit?
 
Mr. Buzzcut said:
You can't honestly extrapolate one bad cable to a 50% failure rate.

And of course I judged from the photo. What other evidence did I have?
Click to expand...

I agree, hence I clearly stated "however for me", the 50% does apply, that's a simple fact.
Never did I state anywhere what the failure rate of all Lighting cables was.
I have neither the data, nor the inclination to do so, that also goes against the PE code of ethics.
http://www.nspe.org/Ethics/CodeofEthics/index.html
Yea - that photo lighting was not sufficient, sorry for that, my Canon T1i was not handy at the time.


T5BRICK said:
One person having this problem with one cable is not a statistically significant sample.
Click to expand...
totally agreed, yet neither you or I are privy to internal warranty data from Apple....unless you signed a NDA and for whatever reason are not abiding by it.

Nobody knows (outside of Apple) if the new 5s has unique manuf issues, or even a isolated run issue that caused this.
Tier 2 and 3 suppliers have been known to NOT follow the specs when their supply chain have some issue, just to keep production volumes up.

Hence, if there was a spike of issues timed to launch of new product sharing that info among a community of users is a good purpose of a forum.

PNutts said:
Let's see... Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones, 14.1 million iPads, and an unknown number of iPods and additional cables in Q4 of 2013. Doing a quick search it's safe to say there are hundreds of millions of Lightning cables out there. Using the logic in this thread, based on my failure rate of zero for 10-ish cables I'm estimating the failure rate for all Lightning cables is 0%.

Apple should've had a good idea of what the failure rate would be before the first Lightning cable was built based on the design, materials, manufacturers, etc. If someone at ever Apple thinks, "Why are so many cables failing?" it's an unexpected and very bad thing. Someone will go to the woodshed and we would have heard about it. There are expected failures and unexpected failures, especially with dirty, scuffed, stained / scorched, abused cables.

But enough reason... Where's the class action lawsuit?
Click to expand...

I never asked nor suggested any such thing....just sharing data here....again like I stated data is neither good nor bad, it's just fact based data.
 
JayLenochiniMac said:
OP, what you're saying/backtracking on is inconsistent with your isolated incident "not inspiring a good confidence in the 8 pin connector."
Click to expand...

Jay, it's Jay your first name? - it's Mike - the OP, I'm not back pedaling on this, wrong spelling and all.
Am I the only one with this issue?
Does not inspire in me good confidence of the 8 pin conenctor.
Click to expand...

I also asked "Am I the only one with this issue", as open ended question to others, to see are there other incidents out there, or truly is mine a outlier, on or past the upper/lower limit of the classic six sigma curve
sigma-value-explained.jpg


My day job, at AutoOE, the competition is so fierce on quality issues, and as the bar gets lowered any quality "noise" (spikes, single incidents at launch time are specifically watched) causes bad JD Powers / other quality measures, we actually are now chasing "the long tail" issues immediately, really.

This is not world peace, I get it.
Just as a long time Mac user, since well, 1984, I've always been so satisfied with the quality of my products. Vintage 680X0 mac photos - post your computer shots
 
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