How to save your iPhone cables from your kids

We’ve gone through about $100 of iPhone cables with our 3 kids over the past six months. They end up looking like this:

It’s annoying — particularly because I can’t easily order quality replacements from Amazon. They have far too many counterfeit cables (which is unreported, but so it goes). That means ordering from Apple, which is a nuisance (shipping + taxes, I have no time to go to a store).

So I started paying attention to how the kids are using the cables — and today I spotted one killer. #2 uses his aging iPhone 4 as a game console; the old battery means he needs a power supply. So he’s been plugging into the short iPhone cable attached to our USB hub, and tugging on it as he games. Bad for the cable, not so good for the phone.

Here’s the fix …

Years ago I bought a 30 pin adapter for a micro/mini USB cable. I’ve never tried using it for data, but it’s been fine for charging (quality on these low end adapters is extremely variable). We have about a dozen mini-USB cables and chargers, and they’re all fare more rugged than any standard 30 pin cable. They’re also long enough that #2 doesn’t need to pull them to full length. One problem solved.

Apple doesn’t sell a 30 pin adapter in the US (I thought they did once but I think this Amazon one is counterfeit) but they do sell a micro-USB lightning adapter (alas, we don’t have a plethora of micro-USB cables):

#2 is getting Emily’s iPhone 5 soon, so we may need to buy this and a few cheap micro-USB cables.

This Belkin adapter is probably a better bet than the ultra-cheap one I purchased, but ti’s also Micro USB.

 

Another approach to this problem is to use a standard cable with a USB extender, but in this case I had an old BlackBerry USB charger at hand so the adapter worked well.