Charging cables are the most neglected piece of technology in your life, until they break and you’re left with a dying phone.
You’re the reason they keep canceling.
Here’s how to take better care of them.
Michael Pecht tortures his own charging cables. He is the founder of the Center for Advanced Lifecycle Engineering at the University of Maryland, a lab where tech companies send devices to find out why they break.
“We’re like a morgue,” Pecht tells me, “but for electronics.”
His team subjected USB cables to unspeakable horrors, crushing, stretching, plugging in too many times, you name it.
As if that wasn’t enough, he puts the broken cables under x-rays to study the damage.
I asked Peht a seemingly simple question: What’s the perfect way to wrap a charging cable?
All my life I’ve believed that cables should be wrapped in loose concentric circles – not too tight – because over-tightening or tangling is a quick route to damaged wires.
It’s a very common occurrence among people I know, so I expected to hear a scientific explanation to back up my cable wrapping technique.
Instead, I discovered that I, like probably millions of others, were just wasting our time.
“It just doesn’t matter,” Pecht says.
“We’ve worked for some of the big computer companies. We’ve never seen any failures due to wrong wrapping.”
This was so hard to reconcile with my cable philosophy that I contacted other experts, who all told me the same thing: wrap your charging cables however you like.
However, there are some other bad habits that shorten the life of my cables.
These are things I’ve been doing every day for decades. My poor cables, poor wires.
If only I knew.
The good news is that I’m here to share what I’ve learned so you can stop making the same mistakes I did.
Our cables work hard for us, but we rarely realize it until they break and we run out of ways to charge our devices.
Don’t they deserve some respect? If you’re not convinced, know that cable care is better for both your wallet and the environment.
Be good to your cables
“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who destroy cables and those who don’t,” says Kyle Vines, co-founder iFixita sustainability and consumer rights company that helps people fix their electronics. It hurts to admit it, but I think I’m in a destructive group.
“When cables break, it’s almost always because they break where the cable meets the plug.”
Ready for anatomy class?
Your cables are full of small metal wires wrapped in insulation.
At the other end, they are inserted into a connector with a plug.
That junction is where things go wrong.
It makes sense if you think about it.
When using a cable, the connector acts as an anchor, and any bending occurs right at the end of the wire.
Think of a paper clip.
Bend it in the same spot over and over and it snaps.
“At the microscopic level, bending beyond the elastic range causes the bonds between atoms to break and reassemble as they change positions,” says Robert Hyers, head of the department of mechanical and materials engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the US.
“You get this accumulation of defects called dislocations, where the atoms don’t line up, like wrinkles in a carpet.”
Too many dislocations hardens the metal, then cracks and your staple is ruined.
The metal wires inside the cable work the same way.
I hope you feel bad enough about those atoms to avoid some of these common problems.
“One thing that a lot of people do, myself included sometimes when I’m lazy, is they just pull a long section of the cord to turn it off,” says Pecht.
“It causes additional stress compared to if you pulled the connector itself.”
A key source of problems comes from cables that are too short for the job, Hyers says.
If you stretch the cord to get it to the outlet, you damage it.
Or, if you’re lying in bed (or anywhere else) with your phone plugged in, pulling the connector at a sharp angle to keep using it, you’re just inviting trouble.
“Another thing we see people do is turn on the phone and then put it in the car cup holder to prop it up,” Vines says.
“So the phone sits on the cable and all the pressure of the phone’s weight, including the bounce while you’re driving, is right there.”
Stop it. It’s just cruel.
Here’s the thing: it actually matters how you wrap much longer and heavier cables.
Ask anyone who works in the film or audio industry, and they’ll tell you about the “over, then under” cable wrapping technique that the pros swear by.
But Vines and others tell me the rules don’t apply to your thin flexible charging cables.
Braids
Vines says it’s definitely not good for cables to wrap them too tightly.
But unless you’re bending the cable at a sharp angle like some weirdo, or pulling on the connector, or bending it while winding it, bad wrapping probably won’t cause a problem.
It all boils down to “abuse” of the connector.
Treat that part of the cable with respect, “and it will last longer than I did,” Hyers says.
But that’s assuming the cables are ready.
Everyone I talked to told me the big problem was cheap, poorly made cables.
You can probably skip the cheap options that you can buy for a few euros at the gas station.
Invest in more robust cables and you’ll spend less money replacing them.
One thing to look out for is braided cables, which use sturdy textile materials or nylon mesh woven over the wires instead of a plastic exterior.
“That’s a good rule of thumb,” Vines says.
“Even Apple has opted for braided cables in the latest models simply because the strength and protection of the braids will protect them better.”
All these are, objectively, trifles.
Cables are probably the least glamorous piece of technology in your life.
They exist to be functional.
And if they work, they can be ignored.
But ignore them in the wrong way, and they will quietly fail you through one microscopic crack at a time.
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