Lightning connector broken off inside iPad?

Had the same problem with the tip breaking off inside my Little Brothers iPad (unit was about six months old). Made an appointment with the Genius Bar and after returning from the back room they said they were unable to repair but would credit to new one with net cost of about $ 300.

Googled the problem and went to the You Tube vid of the guy with the Super Glue. Out steps to success were:

1. We put a drop of the glue (WalMart Automotie purchase Permtec @ $.97/4 pak) on a piece of paper and lighly dipped the free broken end of the plug that was outside of the iPad in the glue.

2. Waited 10 seconds then inserted this broken end with the glue into the charging port and onto the embedded other broken end.

3 Held in place for 60 seconds.

4. The broken end of plastic pulled right out; surprisingly easy

5. However, what didn't come out was the very small metal outside frame that surrounds this end.

6. Used a sewing needle to remove this frame and it came out rather easily.

Total repair

Just read through this post again, after I lost my 13 month old iPad Mini to the lightning connector breakeing off inside completely randomly. Dah-Veed, please post on something you actually have something to offer real experience. Or rather, go try to break you lightning cable until you actually do. Clearly there is a user population whose iPad devices have been rendered useless by day to day usage, and your input here is completely useless and borderline stockholm syndrome.

You've seen the fix, fix it. Otherwise move along, as I am just as entitled to disagree with you as you are with me. I now have five different Apple USB to Lightning cables and not one of them shows any wear and tear and they are all in constant use.

Post some close up photos of the broken off connector and the port on the iPad mini.

Just wanted to share my experience.

Mar. 1st - Purchased IPad Mini Retina Celluar

Mar. 7th - Arrived at my house

Mar. 19th - Tip of the lightning cable connector broke off, and was wedged in the Ipad

Mar. 20th - Apple agreed to replace it for $40 because it was covered in Applecare Plus

Lightning cable I was using was the one that came with the Ipad.

I was told that had I not been enrolled in Applecare Plus, getting it replaced would have cost me $300.

I own many gagets, and I will say that I was very gentle when I inserted the cable into the Ipad. It did, however slide in at an odd angle. When I let go, I could see that the cable was attached at a weird angle. When I pulled on the cable to get it out and see what the problem was, the end terminal snapped off and was left in the Ipad.

It looked exactly like pictures posted.

I asked the Apple rep if this type of problem occured frequently, and her initial answer was "not with Apple brand lightning cable". When I asked, she told me that this was a frequent problem with people using non Apple brand cables.

I think it's terrible that there is no easy way around this problem, not only because it seems like it could be countermeasured rather easily with some simple design changes, but it renders a perfectly good IPad useless, and it's also a very big stress on the owner. I stayed up all night last night researching this problem.

Takeaway here:

1) It's a known problem with no easy fix. You're on your own, people have had success getting out the broken bit but it involves superglue

2) For prevention, use Apple Brand lightning cable

3) When you first buy IPad, make sure you are enrolled in APPLE CARE PLUS. It's worth it.

I want to thank the participants in this forum, thanks to comments and photos I managed to figure out how to fix an iPad from a customer with a little piece of the lightning connector ORIGINAL broken inside.

It is better not to use glue but to use a very thin tip to bend inside the two sides of the piece of metal and then I pull with tweezers professional.

hello, read some of the suggestions. i used a seam ripper to bend it out. worked great (photo here)

my connector broke when ipad dropped to ground, so there was some force used.

thanks

Same problem here in mi Ipad. Twice! those connectors are build terrible. So fragile. And ooops! i spend 700€ in my Ipad. Stills Brand new, but the only solution i get from de AppleStore is to buy a new one.

I am a tech facilitator at a high school. We just started a 1 to 1 initiative, providing an iPad for each student to use. Within a few days we had our first charger broken off in the iPad. The first solution I found online was the super glue, using the other part of the charger. I got a pretty good bond, but it broke apart when I tried to pull it out. I may have gotten a little glue in there, making other attempts harder. However, the chargers snap in there pretty good anyway, so I'm not sure that it was anything other than the normal required force to pull the plug out that caused the bond to break

I tried the seam ripper. It started to move the charger end, but then seam ripper broke. It might have worked if it had been better quality.

Finally got it with a very small screw driver. I had to be pretty rough with it, though.

It works fine. However, the charger plug (a new one, of course), does wobble a bit more from sided to side than it does in a different iPad.

Based on this experience, I am inclined to think that super glue using the twist tie ends (or something else -- maybe an appropriately sized cut off zip tie) might be best to try first. Putting a drop of super glue on paper and dipping the chosen tool in it to get a controlled size drop sounds like a good idea. You want enough glue to completely cover the end and fill all space between the 2 surfaces to be joined, but not much more, to minimize risk of glue going where you don't want it to. If you use something smaller than the channel, but still big enough to get some surface area, and if you use good technique, then I think there would not be much risk of gluing it in there worse. Overall I think this is a "gentler" method than the seam ripper or tiny screw driver method, which in my case resulted in the new charger plug not fitting quite as snugly as before.

I agree that the design seems flawed. Another tech facilitator in our corporation (based on the appearance of the plugs) predicted that we would have problems with this. Beyond that, apparently some are defective.

With a total of nearly 2000 of these in the hands of students (grades k through 12) in our school corporation, I expect that I will have another chance to try it sooner or later.

this worked for me but don't try it if you're under warranty!

Firstly, I tried the super glue fix, which didn't work - the join kept breaking, so...

I found the smallest drill bit I could find, which was narrower than the end of the cable, drilled a couple of holes into the plastic between the metal casing (slow speed, don't go to deep - duh!) and just chewed the plastic out. I was then able to use the sewing "quick unpick" tool referred to in other posts to flick out the plastic and eventually there was just a metal casing left inside .The good thing about that is that you can then carefully work to prise the casing away from the edges and it bends in on itself. It didn't take much to get it out after that. The other tool that was useful was a sewing pin with a tiny hook bent into the end with some needle nosed pliers - that was useful for flicking out plastic and getting some upwards pressure on the broken end.

So, a last resort fix but it worked and the socket wasn't damaged in the process.

Oh, and turn it off before you start digging around. Happy fixing!

I used a very fine point Tweezerman needle nose tweezers. I lightly picked at the plastic middle part while wedging the point in the middle. The inner casing is plastic and lifted out. The metal casing was still wedged in. So again with the tweezers I was able to pull one of the ends out of the metal casing and it lifted out. All good. Just takes 15 or 20 minutes of working very carefully so as not to damage any parts.

The needle worked for me too. My Grandson snapped the tip off in his iPad mini (probably with excessive force). I used a small needle to get out the plastic middle and a larger needle to dig out the metal frame. About 10-15 min. total time. The plug fits tight and charges fine, Thanks to everyone for their advice.

I found a small screwdriver that fit along the side of the lighting pin, then I used a prying force to leverage the broken pin out of the female connector.

These are expensive devices. One should always be careful with devices that we depend on and cost so much.

That is a very sturdily built connector. It is impossible that it merely broke off inside. There would have to be abuse involved in my opinion.

I would use a tiny drop of super-glue on the tip of a small screwdriver to remove it.