How To Stop Your iPhone Charger From Breaking So Easily

The Apple iPhone 6: a £539 slab of elegant telecommunications excellence. 

The Lightning to USB charging cable: a £15 span of ineptitude that can render the above gadget obsolete.

You only need to have a quick browse of the reviews for Apple's Lightning cable to see just how shoddy it is - an average rating of 1.5 stars, you get the impression it isn't any lower because the Apple Store won't allow you to give it a zero.

You could splash out another £30 and buy a more expensive, rugged version of the cable - or save a few quid following this brilliant "hack" from ZDNet that ensures your standard issue charger never dies again.

First: buy some heat-shrink tubing - an insulating sheath of plastic that's useful for a heap of electrical tweaks. It needs to have a shrink ratio of three-to-one (it gets three times smaller when it's heated up), like this stuff, for £2.79. You'll also need something to cut the tubing, like wire strippers or sharp scissors, and a heat source, like a blow torch or heat gun.

Then: Cut off a suitable length of the tubing to cover the cable immediately below the Lightning connector - this is the part that most usually breaks or frays. Having slid the tube over the area you want to reinforce, apply your heat element - but carefully, you don't want to burn it. It'll then shrink down and provide an extra layer of protection for your flimsy charging cable. 

If you want to be extra protective, you could even thread the small spring from a click pen over the cable before applying the heat-shrink tubing, like so.

Here's hoping we find an equally brilliant hack for improving your iPhone's battery life...

[Via: ZDNet]

(Images: Shutterstock)