Lightning cable woes

[Mixtronic]

First off, I'm a long time reader, first time poster. Searched the forums and came up with vague answers

So, after months of use, my lightning cable broke, just below the connector, like it doesn't make contact somewhere under the insulation in the wire. It was a pain to charge because it had to be in the right position.

I went to the Grand Central Term store in NYC to replace it (since it was the only store in a 100 mile radius to have it in stock) and that one did the same thing.

What should I do to avoid this issue in the future?

 

[Rocko1]

Quit pulling on the wire. Pull on the plastic section. Keep getting it replaced. It's under warranty.

 

[Wafflausages]

Buy a bunch of chinese ones off ebay for 4 bucks a piece. I have one and it works perfectly fine

 

[dkh587]

getting it replaced. It's under warranty.

+1

I'm on my 3rd one since I got it on launch day. I refuse to pay a single penny for this cheap cable that keeps breaking down. So I'm gonna switch it out each time it gets weak at the Apple store #

 

[MR Bulk]

I notice that compared to the 30-pin, this bugger is hard to pull out since it is small yet slightly oval and not flat, and smooth and slippery with no real grip. Although you should always pull it straight out, the design almost makes you need to twist, angle and bend it a bit to get enough traction to pull it out!

Planned replacement/obsolescence?

 

[Partridge]

I haven't had a problem with any of my lightning cables and I'm pretty rough with them in my opinion. Including detaching my phone by picking it up and pulling it (the phone itself) until the connector releases.

I think that the main problem people have with these cables is the same problem people have had with all of apple's cables for years now. Inadequate strain relief. To keep things neat looking, they just have that little sleeve extending out of the connector on the cable, where many other manufacturers have a long extended rubber section with flex grooves.

This lets people put a lot of flex on the end of the cable near the connector, and things fail faster. It's happened to me before with the old 30pin cables (the newer slim kind).

Frankly, I don't trust the fake chinese cables at all. I'd rather spend $19 on a cable from apple and then just have them replace it under warranty if it fails.

If you need something more robust, I have a belkin cable that definitely feels like it is made of sterner stuff, and it uses genuine apple connectors and chips. The third party authorized connectors are a little bigger than the apple ones though. I took a belt sander to my belkin and slimmed it down considerably without any ill effect, so in that case it's clearly just a design issue in that they used a lot more rubber than apple did.