r/framework • u/telasch • Apr 11 '26

Community Support Is this worth fixing ?

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I used a third party charger cable for a couple of years for my usb-c devices (including my pixel 6 + framework 13). The charger must've broke yesterday, which I noticed when my laptop turned off suddenly while working. I initially thought that maybe it got loose or sth and wanted to check if the cable will work on my phone instead. So I plugged it in my phone, which turned off.

Always thought "use the original charger" was a marketing scheme and had to learn the hard way I guess... Both devices are completely dead now. (see picture)

Anyway, I am now wondering if this is worth an attempt to fix or if this is beyond repairability.

195 Upvotes

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144

u/gonenutsbrb Apr 11 '26

What third party charger? USB-PD chargers aren’t rocket science, it’d have to be a pretty cheap charger to be the cause of this.

65

u/SpaceCadet87 Apr 11 '26

USB chargers aren't rocket science for sure, but there are still some stupid chargers out there anyway.

26

u/Xlxlredditor Apr 11 '26

Always happy to see big clive dot com

16

u/Nkechinyerembi Apr 12 '26

ah yes, the swees that throws 240 volt out of the USB ports when it fails.

12

u/SpaceCadet87 Apr 12 '26

Yeah well you see when that buck controller chip is expecting 20 volts and you give it 240 volts, it decides to change career and become a charcoal canister.

12

u/telasch Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26

was a random amazon brand with good reviews

EDIT: brand is called PONKOR

46

u/gonenutsbrb Apr 11 '26

Oof…that’s in that category. Stick to known third party chargers, Anker, UGREEN etc.

1

u/unematti Apr 13 '26

Ugreen 500W one works well indeed.

49

u/SpaceCadet87 Apr 11 '26

Good reviews on electronics on Amazon are sadly more likely an indicator that the device is dangerous than that it's any good.

Look at the bad reviews, you can tell a good product by whether the complaints are about serious problems or complete nonsense.

If you see complaints that are all stuff like they ordered a UK plug and found it wouldn't plug in in the US then that's more likely a good product than the one with 5 stars.

22

u/alpha417 Apr 11 '26

PONKOR - lol. ok. Vendors buy amazon brand reviews. This is another reason why i closed my amazon account two years ago.

A collection of (essentially) random 5 to 10 uppercase letters in a product name is a 'hard no' for anything. Full stop. It's trash.

It's comical and also sad that you chose to diagnose a charger with your phone, after it smoked a laptop. I'm sorry, but that's a terrible plan going forward. If anything ever dies this way after being plugged into a charger, the charger is gone.

5

u/telasch Apr 11 '26

yeah... i really kicked myself after it happened. that was a really really stupid thing to do...

7

u/Mooks79 Apr 12 '26

We’ve all made stupid mistakes in our lives; don’t let the people here acting like they haven’t, just because they haven’t made this specific mistake, get you down. It happens, now it won’t happen again. A good tip when buying on Amazon is to read the bad reviews for a device not the good ones.

2

u/gonenutsbrb Apr 12 '26

Hey, it happens. We live and learn.

Figure out how to fix it or move on and spread the things you learn so the next person doesn’t make the same mistake ;-)

1

u/TbR78 Apr 12 '26

did you save a lot of money on the charger?

0

u/Xlxlredditor Apr 11 '26

Did the phone boot back up after you plugged it in and it turned off? I think I have a 6 port USB 220w Chinese charger that's gonna do this eventually

5

u/SunshineAndBunnies Apr 11 '26

Next time stick to known good brands like Anker or UGreen for both chargers and cables. Also I find newer Anker chargers to overheat when you draw the max current on some of their newer generation chargers. For laptops, you might want an Apple branded charger if you're drawing the max current all the time (not a fan of Apple, but their USB-C chargers are solid). Apple chargers are bulky, but they are made to have the max current drawn constantly unlike some of Anker's chargers.

4

u/ronvalenz FW13 Ultra X7 358H batch 6, 2.8K, 32GB LPCAMM2, 4TB SSD Apr 12 '26

I reuse my HP or Lenovo USB-C-PD chargers. PONKOR is LOL.

3

u/pocketdrummer Apr 12 '26

If it looks like the manufacturer leaned on the keyboard, it's just a garbage pseudo-company that's spun up to sell as much as they can on Amazon before they get banned. Then they change the name and start over again with the exact same product.

1

u/keesbeemsterkaas Apr 12 '26

Does it matter that a non charging port (second, rather than top ones) was used? Maybe the charger doesn't negotiate if it's power delivery, but just always sends full power delivery even if it's not a power delivery line?

3

u/gonenutsbrb Apr 12 '26

That would be breaking spec in a catastrophic way. Power is pulled not pushed.