I can't remember the last time I had a legit lightning cable break. At least not for any other reason than "kids kept yanking it out by the cord and finally ripped the end off." I still have cables from at least 5 years ago, for sure.
Micro USB cables used to last anywhere from a few days to a few months for me. USB-C is much better, but I still find they fail in less than a year. Not sure exactly why, it looks like it ought to be a sturdy design.
Same anecdote here -- every lightning cable has held up spectacularly. I've still bought a couple of extra long braided ones just because, but the included ones are fine.
And even if the cable failed, it's worth noting that with the various USB variants before USB-C, it was likely the connector in the device that failed rather than the cable (because it bore the load). I had more than one device have the USB port destroyed under ordinary use.
I still prefer lightning to USB-C, but if it wasn't for Apple doing their own thing we'd probably be still on some ridiculous USB variant with a litany of design mistakes.
In my experience, the connector has never been implicated in a failing Lightning cable; it’s always been the cable itself. By contrast, the average lifespan of a micro USB cable in my household is a couple months, before the connectors themselves get bent beyond repair.
I don't think I've had any decent lightning cable wear out. The super thin and cheap ones have, but I haven't had any from Apple or Anker wear out yet.
I have the opposite problem. None of my USB-C cables ever seem to break, whereas a whole bunch of lightning cables of ours have broke, either fully or partially (partially being when one side works because of pressure or something).
Yet, over the years, I've only had one or two break. I have years-old Motorola micro usb cables that still work perfectly, and which are still in use. They were not all garbage.
Anecdotal. My third party lightning cables last forever now that I no longer buy the apple branded ones with that crappy insulation that frays when you look at them wrong
I’ve never found Lightning connectors to fail, but the cable to connector junction does seem to wear out after a few years, especially on Apple cables with that terrible vinyl-like stress relief material.
But USB-C is pretty young. It remains to be seen if cables and connectors are really durable forever.
I am still suspicious of the complexity of the nested male/female design with the inner male blade being part of the device and hard/impossible to fix if broken. . . but have not seen any problems on my increasing number of USB-C devices yet.
I guess there will always be someone who can damage any cable. I've never killed a lightning cable myself, and only ever seen someone else (my own mother) do it once -- and it wasn't the connector that broke, it was the cable at the strain relief. Hell, the cable still actually worked, but I was uncomfortable with the state of the cable and bought her a new one.
When I was doing Android phones, I was going through a new Micro USB cable about every month or two. Never long enough to fray the cable itself, it was always the connector flaking out and refusing to make a good enough connection to charge reliably.
The little heatshrinked part near the connector is very clearly designed to fail, and I've seen so many lightning cables fail there after just 6 months.
Meanwhile my Oneplus 3t USB cable that I've been using even after moving on from that phone has only frayed this year, but still works.
My brother has an iPad with the Lightning port on it, and has to get new cables every few years because they start fraying and breaking around the bottom of the connector.
And he isn't really rough or abusive with these cables either.
Where as I still have MicroUSB cables from 10 or 12yrs ago that still look and work like new.
I feel like lightning cables don't last as long as USB cables, but lightning ports last much longer than micro/mini USB ports. Since I can buy many new cables for the price of a phone, I'm happy with that tradeoff.
When I used an iPhone for a couple of years, I went through approximately a Lightning cable per month, sometimes more. At one point I took a carrier bag of broken Lightning cables to the electronics recycling.
I don't know what it is, but I've never broken a single Lightning cable since I got my first iPhone in 2016. I still have 2 new-in-box cables from upgrades. But a few weeks ago I was picking up a friend and when she got in my car she said "Why do you have the Apple cable? They're so fragile" and immediately tore the strain relief plugging her phone in.
I've yet to see a broken lightning connector personally of the 20-30 devices I've seen/used, but I can't say the same of USB. There are sample descrepencies of course, as USB has been around long, but saying the Lightning connector isn't durable is pretty much flat out the opposite opinion of most impressions/experiences, and sounds more like a paid spam-pinion without evidence supporting any specific issues.
I had never broken a lightning cable or a macbook charging cable (original magsafe or magsafe2) in maybe a decade of use, but as soon as my kids started using iDevices I've had to switch to buying extra-super-durable ones because Apple's don't stand a chance in the hands of a 7 year old. The Amazon Basics lightning cables with the braided external cover and solid metal housing at the ends seem pretty bomb-proof so far. The housing + strain relief is kind of absurdly long but it's very very sturdy. Anker stuff also seems quite solid.
Edit: I think a lot of people just naturally don't pay much attention to what they're doing to their cables. I used to work at a company where I was pretty much the only one whose MBP power cable wasn't visibly fraying at the ends, and I'm still using the same one 5 years later.
Fragile contrasted with USB cables, perhaps. I have used several counterfeit lightning cables from Shenzhen, some of which just failed after about a month to half a year, the reason of which I guess was mechanical stress. The genuine Apple ones are still pretty solid and work fine, though. There may be some pretty tough requirements in the process of production or the materials.
Micro USB cables used to last anywhere from a few days to a few months for me. USB-C is much better, but I still find they fail in less than a year. Not sure exactly why, it looks like it ought to be a sturdy design.
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