I had a nice 2025-related post lined up for you today, but I have issues.
The photos I need to illustrate the post are on my iPhone.
But my iPhone no longer connects to my laptop, the connection's stopped working.
It worked OK yesterday morning but it's not working now.
More importantly I can't charge my iPhone.
Normally I charge the phone by connecting it via a cable to an adaptor plug.
But the connection's stopped working, so it won't charge.
The connection's been dodgy for over a year, but I've always been able to twiddle the cable and connect.
Sometimes it works first time, but sometimes it's taken a lot of twiddling.
I have become an expert in twiddling, often at a cunning angle.
Yesterday morning it twiddled fine.
But it's not twiddling now.
Thankfully the phone's still on 30% charge, not 3%, but that won't last long.
I am thus on a quest to charge my iPhone before it becomes an expensive brick.
I'm pretty sure the issue is a mucky lightning port.
Yes, I've tried cleaning it but to no effect.
Yes, I know not to clean it too forcibly in case of damage.
Yes, I've tried using a different cable.
Yes, I've read the online advice.
Yes, this is not an uncommon problem.
Yes, my phone is very nearly four years old.
Yes, I know someone at an Apple Store might be able to help.
Yes, exactly the same thing happened with my last iPhone.
Yes, it's a stupid design error but we can't change that.
No, I am not buying your favourite type of phone instead.
There are potential getarounds to get the photos off the phone.
For example I could email the photos to myself, but there are loads of them.
Also I'm only on 30% so I'm trying not to use my phone in a power-hungry way.
The serious problem here isn't the photos, it's the charging.
Whatever, I was faced last night with the possibility that my phone might soon lose all its charge and become useless.
This isn't just annoying, it's potentially very restrictive.
An awful lot of services insist on verifying things via a phone.
Purchases, banking, medical stuff, tickets, allsorts.
If you suddenly can't do that you're fundamentally buggered.
For example, you need phone verfication to access your Self Assessment tax return.
I realised last night I hadn't submitted mine yet, and might not be able to.
So I spent last night compiling and submitting my 23/24 return before I suddenly couldn't.
And thus I didn't write my nice 2025-related post.
For which I apologise.
I also have a nice 2025-related post lined up for you tomorrow.
Best keep your fingers crossed.
10:30am update: Good news, it charges again. I tried poking around with a soft brush but it didn't help. I went out and bought some wooden cocktail sticks (60p from Tesco), scraped around with two of those but that didn't help either. So then I went to the Apple Store in Stratford. I didn't have an appointment but it was a Friday morning in very early January so I got seen almost immediately. The helpful techjuggler gave it a scrape with a metal dongle on his keyring, decided that still wasn't good enough, fetched a soft brush and used it for a prolonged scrub, then finally produced a paperclip and scraped away with that too. All in all he did about five minutes of intensive focused cleaning, like going to a session at the hygienist, after which the port was properly clear and a cable could push in all the way. I'm home now and my phone's already up to 40% and charging happily. Problem solved. It still doesn't get you a proper 2025-related post today though, sorry.
