One of my Mobius cams had a chronic problem with an increasingly loosening mini-USB connector. At first I spent weeks and weeks thinking I had a firmware problem with the camera shutting itself down unexpectedly until enough troubleshooting revealed it to be a bad connector. I eventually discovered that the internal plastic part where the pins plug in was cracked. Some careful fiddling with the socket and plug helped at first but the thing eventually became useless and I had to buy a whole new board and rebuild the camera. The plug on the new board has been fine......so far.
When I think back on a lifetime of owning a wide variety of different electronics it seems as if the connectors are always the weak point. As a teenager it was always the full size phone plugs (like those used on electric guitars) that would break....or the sockets themselves would become damaged. How many radios, tape recorders and walkmans have I owned with loose or broken mini-jacks, mini-phone connectors or sockets? How many wall-wart connectors have I constantly had to fiddle with because they were loose and not charging? How many bent pins have I had on Din or mini-din plugs or F connectors or S-video connectors? Of course, there is a whole list of cumbersome and less than reliable computer connection technologies that have been abandoned for what in hindsight are obvious reasons.
So it seems that mini-usb and micro-usb are part of a long tradition of less than ideal design.
It seems to me, from personal experience with all these things that in recent years Apple Computer has been one of the few companies that has made an effort to finally address the "connector" problem. I noticed this first with the MagSafe connector for laptops. It was (and is) a very durable, secure NdFeB magnetic 5 pin power connector for laptops that won't drag your machine off your desk if you trip over the wire. Then there was the 30 pin Dock connector which was a very durable and secure plug for iPod and iPhone. It wasn't perfect but it seemed better to me than anything else out there. Now they have replaced the 30-pin Dock connector with the Lightning Connector and to my mind they've come the closest so far to the ideal miniature data/power connector. The Lightning connector is a solid slab and therefore
very durable compared to other thin metal types and it can be inserted into the device with either side facing up or down which eliminates one of the most annoying and cumbersome aspects of the micro-USB or mini-USB connector. It also has no pins, which is one of its best assets in my view. So far in my experience it has been solid, reliable and unfailing under any usage conditions. Both the plug and socket have even taken some abuse with no ill effects or loosening.
Unfortunately, the Lightning connector is proprietary and is exclusive to the iPad, iPhone and iPod. Then again, Apple has been the inventor of other (complete) connection technologies that have become industry standards such as
IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and maybe this might happen one day with the Lightning connector itself. Or maybe some other company will devote the resources to inventing a connection technology that will finally resolve the deficiencies and disadvantages of the micro and mini USB connectors we are all forced to live with. It is quite remarkable when I stop to think about it that here in 2014 with all the amazing technology we have available to us we are still stuck with loose connectors and bent pins.
MagSafe connector
