can't plug lightning cable into iphone 5

Thanks alot man !!! You own troubleshooting helped. Once again thank you.🙂

I honestly didn't believe you guys and thought i was just screwed as i have been scraping for a while but alas i tried a little harder and managed to remove a bunge of brown stuff (gross) from my iPhone 6. Thanks all!

Yep. Scrabbled around the socket with a pin gave it a bit of a suck with a hoover. Continued digging around and out came a chunk of accumulated fluff and hay presto! Bit like digging around in your navel. :-)

I used a small paper clip and used that to have a good poke around. It didn't work first time but I had a second go holding the phone in the vertical position so that any dirt would have gravity to help it out and it did the trick!

Thank you so much for this information gwforeman. I'd also like to thank jpaylor as well for providing the additional trouble that he had with fixing this. I too tried using a torch light to inspect the opening but found no problems. Before googling, I even tried a paper clip to feel around for issues and felt nothing.

After reading all the comments about how it was difficult to tell and after many tries the users finally got it, I decided to try the paperclip again. And guess what, it worked! It was definitely lint at the bottom of the inside port on the device. I had to scrape it up off the floor of port and got it out. The cable now perfectly seats and charges! Thanks!

It's definitely lint. I thought the bottom of the plug was white but in actual fact it's grey. The compacted layer of paper lint looked like it was part of the phone. In the end a dental scraper got it out and it works perfectly now.

I was about to make a Genius Bar appt. but I didn't want to wait 4-5days for an opening. It didn't look like there was anything blocking the lightning port, but when I used a paper clip to poke inside it was felt kinda rubbery and looked dark gray. Turned out it was a lot of compacted sticky debris (see photo). I managed to pick it all out and now my lighting cable plugs in fine.

This is my 3rd iPhone and this has never happened before. I'm surprised that this happened with my relatively new iPhone 7plus!

Thx everyone!

Hello all, I got panicked in few mins because my phone was no longer charging but with the same charger my friend's phone was charging. I checked the posts visually but could not find anything stuck inside. As I read the comments here, I again tried and tried with tooth pick but failed.

Finally I used a thin metal pin with a plastic enclosure and tried cleaning it, it had minute thread clogged inside. Which was blocking access for charger pin to enter fully. However it's solved now, thanks to everyone here!

Had the same problem. Found a piece of plastic...

Just had the same issue with my iPhone 6+

Using a flashlight and the end of a paper clip, fished out a small, compacted wad of pocket lint. Now it works fine. Thanks