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Comment by mistercow | Hacker News Reader

I only ever had one mini USB cord go bad, and that was a minor pain. But I have had the micro USB port on a cell phone become unreliable, which is insanely frustrating. The post holding the contacts no longer wants to push them against the cord, so it frequently loses the connection.

I can solve the problem temporarily by pushing the post back with a small screw driver, but "temporarily" here is measured in minutes or hours.

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Exactly the same experience here, except that I never had a mini-USB failure. After roughly 6 months of use, the USB receptacle of my LG smartphone was just not holding on to any cable anymore. I sent it back to LG, and they replaced the part containing the mirco-USB port.

On an unrelated note: LG noticed that I was running a custom ROM but didn't make any problem of it, while technically they can claim that such an action voids my warranty.

I'm not clear on the specifics of the actual law, but this seems like what the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act was trying to protect.

There's no link between a physical hardware failure and flashing an aftermarket ROM, and as such they would be really hard pressed to have a legally valid reason to deny you coverage for the micro-USB port being defective.

There's a lot of grey area - if your display goes out, maybe it's because of software - but something purely physical is pretty clear cut.

Actually, if you're in the US the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act covers you in the case of customizations [1]. Under this law, manufacturers are only able to claim your warranty as void if the modifications are what caused your warranty claim. I doubt they would be able to claim that your custom ROM caused your hardware failure on the USB port, so legally they had to fix it. More info on this FTC law [2].

[1] http://www.examiner.com/article/what-modifications-will-void...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_...

I'm in Europe, but it may well be that a similar law is in effect here. However, a lot of consumers (me included) wouldn't know about that, and companies try to get out of repairs that they are legally required to perform.

Take a look at Apple's warranty: they claim to provide only 1 year of warranty, while European law requires them to provide two years. They will repair your device in the second year (it's the law!). However, I bet their confusing labeling etc. will cause a lot of people to believe their warranty has expired. Those people will either not ask for a free repair or pay their shop to repair the device.

In the US, Magnuson-Moss is often referred to as "the lemon law" (a defective product that can't be repaired is colloquially called a "lemon"). Specifically, "the lemon law" refers commonly to cars that have issues the dealer didn't specify before the sale and will not/can not fix.

Problem is, the FTC requires you to have a lawyer file a lawsuit and coordinate your legal costs and representation with the FTC, generally requiring a lawyer specifically dealing in lemon law cases. I've been down this path with a defective cell phone (HTC Touch Pro) and trying to get my carrier to replace it, and it's impossible to find a lemon law lawyer that deals in anything besides used car sales.

As always, the law is well intentioned but enforcement is next to impossible, just like you said.

I've had the opposite experience. On three different phones I had with Mini-USB the port would always break. I'd have to warp the cord around or rest the phone on the connector to make contact and charge.

All my phones since have had Micro-USB and I haven't had any issues.

Though it really feels like Micro-USB is flimsier, it doesn't seem to be that way in practice.

I couldn't agree more. The mini-USB connector was solid and well guided, while the micro-USB connector's male component is flimsy and the housing (as others have stated) is vague (I have to use a bright light to be able to see which side has bevels). I'm glad I have a touchstone (inductive charger), as my touchpad (with micro-USB) already only charges with a couple cables (and I use the touchstone 90% of the time for charging). My N900 (also micro-USB) is even worse... very flakey trying to get it to actually take a charge, pretty much since day 1. I'm lucky though, as many (MANY) have had their micro-USB port rip right off the board on which its mounted due to the "clips" that are supposed to be such an improvement:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37107 http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=75920

Same here. Also I find it much more difficult to insert the micro plugs. I'd like to know the real reason for the change.

After all, RJ45 plus are notoriously bad, but no one has ever changed them in decades.

Probably because by the time it became usual to plug them in often (read: portable computers), they were already commonplace to a degree that made it impractical to replace them.

And nowadays there’s Wifi/UMTS available for most such usecases – I have a docking station at home and use the Thinkpad’s internal Ethernet port maybe twice a year; mostly relying on wireless data transfers when not at home.

gabifrons: I hope you see this; your account has been hellbanned, apparently for the comment you just made in this thread. I agree with you on the N900 USB charging flakiness; it's what made me give up on mine.

same here, I can´t charge my s+ anymore. But it is the main standard nowadays, and is really thin, so . . .

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