Hi, so I want to use my sister’s old iPhone 6S to mess around with and to jailbreak, but apparently the charging port/pins are all messed up and it indicates that the phone needs to be plugged in when it is plugged in and the wire symbol only goes away when I hold down the cord at a certain angle and I don’t wanna risk breaking it. Plus, it hurts my fingers to do so. I also have 16 year old devices that don’t do this and charge fine.
I tried cleaning it and stuff, no dice
How did you clean it? The schmoo gets jammed in the bottom of the port and after 10 years of insertion cycles it gets really stuck down there. If you can find one get a thumb tack with a really tiny (but still pointy) tip and use that to scrape it out. Do multiple cycles of cleaning, blowing compressed air, inserting/removing cable repeat.
The pins are only on one side of the receptacle so figure out where that is, and keep the metal thumb tack to that side so you don’t short/damage the pins. Also while you’re at it inspect the pins. They should be gold. If they’re brown then maybe the gold coating got wiped out somehow. I destroyed a cable (not the phones end thankfully) by having some water in there and it shorted some of the pins.
They also make kits for cleaning ports. I have a USB C one that looks like an asterisk that I like. The dingus is plastic and soft so you shouldn’t be able to short the pins with it, but it’s not as good at scraping out the really nasty stuff.
Oh also try a stiff plastic bristle brush.