I just fixed a long-standing problem with my iPhone. Beginning about 2 years ago, I noticed that the quality of plugging the phone in was falling considerably. Sometimes it couldn’t charge. Sometimes it wouldn’t connect to the (wired) Apple CarPlay in my Honda. Once I guessed the way home after a giving a tech talk because my phone died and just wouldn’t charge at all.

But hey, phones are expensive and a little finicky. I figured I had been to rough plugging and unplugging it, or gotten cheap charger cables that had over bent the connectors or something, and the contact points had failed. I got a wireless charger for my desk and my car, and a little Bluetooth-to-3.5mm thing so that I could get podcasts out of the phone and into the aux jack, and went on with my life.

Then, during a recent project, I tried to plug the phone in one last time. (I was trying to get a debug build of a phone app I’m working on onto the phone. I was not ready to replace the phone over this side project app). Sitting down at a table, not trying to connect to a car, not trying to charge a phone in a hurry in an airport or whatever, I noticed something super obvious: The plug wouldn’t go in all the way. Was there stuff in there?

I went and got my trusty can of compressed air and blasted it straight into the port on the iPhone. A little bit of stuff came out. I tried reconnecting it. It seemed to get charge but not data. Was it still partially obstructed?

I got a plain wooden toothpick and started gently poking around in the point. (My reasoning: soft toothpick wood is softer than whatever metal is used to make the contacts. Also, the port has been totally hosed for over a year, so I can’t make it worse.) I got a little fuzz out. I worked on it more. I got some more fuzzy out. I worked on it some more, trying to drive the fuzz to one side of the port and pinch it there, and then drag the toothpick out against that side of the port. After 10 or 20 iterations, a truly embarassing amount of lint and debris came out. Uncrompressed, at least like 30mb a quarter inch across.

So today in tech adventures, I thought I’d be setting up linting for an XCode project, and instead I physically pulled lint out of my iPhone. Fixed it right up. A friendly reminder not to neglect the other kind of linting.

Till next time, happy learning!
– Will

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