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Using cheap phone chargers

A

Apple-NoEscape

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 25, 2010
467
0
United Kingdom
Im sick of apple chargers breaking, no matter how carefully I treat them they seem to always 'snap' on the wire near the part that plugs into your phone.
At £15 a time it's rather annoying.

I have bought a cheap £5 charger from one of them little stalls you get selling all cheap phone accesories.

I've plugged it in and it seems to be working fine, is there a way this may damage my phone etc?
 
Are you talking about the cable our just the charger. Cables will break, cheap ones too. I've never heard of a Apple USB charger breaking. But if the Chinese fellah used bad soldering, it could burn through...
 
Trat said:
Are you talking about the cable our just the charger. Cables will break, cheap ones too. I've never heard of a Apple USB charger breaking. But if the Chinese fellah used bad soldering, it could burn through...
Click to expand...

Well it's always the cable.
You know you have the part that plugs into your phone, well the wire ther always frays and then snaps.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I'm using a charger that I purchased from AT&T, and there have been no issues with it so far.
 
Apple-NoEscape said:
Well it's always the cable.
You know you have the part that plugs into your phone, well the wire ther always frays and then snaps.
Click to expand...

Apple really needs to supply a better cable like the old iPod ones. Everyone that I know that has an iPhone, including myself, the cable splits in the same spot.

Im using an old Apple iPod cable for my iPhone. Its solid and reinforced a lot at the split spot.

Best thing to do is tape the phone connector covering the split. I know it sucks, but it will buy you more time with your cable.
 
weemanpow3 said:
Apple really needs to supply a better cable like the old iPod ones. Everyone that I know that has an iPhone, including myself, the cable splits in the same spot.

Im using an old Apple iPod cable for my iPhone. Its solid and reinforced a lot at the split spot.

Best thing to do is tape the phone connector covering the split. I know it sucks, but it will buy you more time with your cable.
Click to expand...

May have to look into buying one from somewhere. I'm guessing eBay will have them.

This cheap Chinese knock off thing is doing well so far *touch wood* it just doesn't turn green when your phone is charged like it says, lmao.
 
Apple-NoEscape said:
Im sick of apple chargers breaking, no matter how carefully I treat them they seem to always 'snap' on the wire near the part that plugs into your phone.
At £15 a time it's rather annoying.

I have bought a cheap £5 charger from one of them little stalls you get selling all cheap phone accesories.

I've plugged it in and it seems to be working fine, is there a way this may damage my phone etc?
Click to expand...

You know the charger is covered under the warranty, right? Like, you can just bring it to them and they'll give you another one?
 
after having several official iPhone sync cables break on me, I'm using a cheap 6 ft. cable from Monoprice.

It's working just fine today.
 
Apple-NoEscape said:
May have to look into buying one from somewhere. I'm guessing eBay will have them.

This cheap Chinese knock off thing is doing well so far *touch wood* it just doesn't turn green when your phone is charged like it says, lmao.
Click to expand...

I've bought 2 so far off eBay and have had great luck! They were listed as genuine apple and that's what they were. I think I paid $2.88 for the first one with free shipping and a few months later when I bought the second one it'd went up to $4.24 with free shipping, still far cheaper then apple! At that price it's not bad that the casing around the end frays.
 
Hm.. I never had a charger break on me, the USB cord or the actual brick, and I've owned many iPods in my life, and now an iPhone. But I guess it happens to some people. Personally, I don't trust the cheaper ones. Mainly because I don't want my phone to explode or have to pay for a replacement. But anyway, if I were you, I'd go buy a charger from Apple and then just tape the part that keeps breaking. Or just try not to bend it too much in that spot.
 
anonymous guy said:
after having several official iPhone sync cables break on me, I'm using a cheap 6 ft. cable from Monoprice.

It's working just fine today.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, Monoprice no longer sells iPhone/iPod cables and chargers. =( I was going to order a whole bunch of them (because I do wear through them fairly fast) and then they stopped carrying them.
 
Apple-NoEscape said:
Well it's always the cable.
You know you have the part that plugs into your phone, well the wire ther always frays and then snaps.
Click to expand...

Like this after less than a week of using it?

Photo on 2010-09-26 at 15.34.jpg
 
I don't get this, Mine never had this issue. My wife does because she pulls on the cord a little while unplugging her iPhone/iPod. It's not her fault so I gave her my old iPod cord (the one that has 2 buttons on the side to unplug it).
 
I've owned 4 Macbooks (3 pros) an iPhone 3G, 2 3G's and iPhone 4 and a few iPods and never had this happen to any of my cables ... :confused:
 
I totally agree that the Apple original usb cables are THE SUCK.
I've had this happen to me on all of my 4 iphones (all generations) so far.

cfb14927.jpg

The "brownish" color on the cord is from using tape to keep the cable together..
 
iMacDragon said:
or phone them?
Click to expand...
Or open a thread about it here?

BTW: these things aren't called 'chargers' but dock connector 'cables'. A charger is the thing you put in your wall box...

P.S. I used my 3G cable for 2 years without a problem. Clearly, they aren't build to put to much strain on. They are build to charge your device: not to pull and stretch on them while charing it. This is something I would expect a 5 year old not to understand. Are you guys <5 years old?
 
Mine cracked from everyday use, mind you I am a bit rough with it now that I think about it. Typically I wrap it up and throw it in the bottom of my backpack along with my MBP charger.. pile in some clothes, put my MBP in the laptop compartment on my bag, and put my iPad against the back.

That's my definition of everday use, as far as transportation goes. I still don't think they should be so weak.
 
i still have the cable from my OG ipod classic. i've never had a failure or had the cable itself fall apart. i do, however, have OCD when it comes to transporting anything electronic. i pack a separate bag for large cables and accessories. within this bag, i have a small tupperware container for small cables and headphones, etc.
 
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