Time for a new cable or a clean

Step 1: clean out the lint from the charging port
Step 2: make sure you actually got all the lint out and there isn't any hiding to the side.
The sim ejector pin that used to come with phones can sometimes just barely fit between the center blade and connector housing. Otherwise a paperclip with a slight hook bent into the end can work well. Flosspicks work well to dig out the lint.
Also consider getting a wireless charger for nightly charging if your phone supports it.
- I prefer a toothpick. Wood won’t scratch the metal or cause a short, but it’s still stiff enough to scrape any lint that’s stuck. And lint sticks a bit to the toothpick, so that helps get it out.
  
  Neither will the plastic of a floss pick. And the floss pick is narrower so there is much less risk of deforming the interior parts of the plug. Also, less risk of splinters.
  
  Toothpick is absolutely the best solution for this. 3d printed cleaning picks are also usable but aren't as strong in my experience
  
  Sometimes the toothpick tapers too quickly though and I have break it or shave a bit off to make it fit all the way into the port
  
  I just shave the end of a match down. It's flat and you can make it pretty thin easily.
- The port on my old phone broke entirely but it still had wireless charging so I got three more years out of it. Then the display failed and since phones have switched to USB C I figured it was time to upgrade
  
  time to upgrade
  They fucking got ya. That's like a $30 repair and you just threw it in landfill and gave them another grand or more. Weaksauce.
- A comment like this one saved me from giving up on my aging phone.
  No matter how convinced you are you definitely cleaned it, there still could be a little bit more stuck in there.
- I ended up having to use an actual sewing needle since the lint was compacted and the ejector pin was too wide
- Wireless charging WILL wear out your battery faster.
  For longevity, use a slow wired charger. This will put the least thermal strain on the battery.
  
  How exactly?
  Also, my phone charges slower with a wireless charger.
  Lots of hand wavy theories and generalizations in the answers below, some of them sound very convincing. None of them actually cite any sources or backup those theories with data.
  Here's my own acedotal experience. I've put my phone down on a seemingly well designed wireless charging pad every night for almost 4 years and this phones battery has shown zero sign of deterioration that I can see. This is the first phone I've ever owned with wireless charging and also the first with a battery that hasn't given up the ghost in 2 years or less. The same pad also charges my smart watch every night, which doesn't even have any other option for charging.
  Next they'll be telling you to avoid using cruise control on the highway because it will wear out the transmission. Use your phone as it was designed to be used and stop worrying.
  
  I've charged my Pixel 6 wirelessly every night for 3 years and had zero battery loss. Simply not true.
- Everyone raves about usb-c but despite my hating everything Apple, the lightning port's physical design is so much better.
  Who thought putting a thin circuit board projection inside the port was a good idea?
  
  Lightning is an amazing design but I fucking hate that my XS Max is USB TWO SPEEDS
- To add to this, get yourself a USB-C nubbin to protect it going forward.
- Also electrical contact cleaner if it's really nasty
  
  DeoxIT, they have a name and we respect it around here.

I switched over to magnetic charging cables a few years back, and would never look back. Keeps the port protected, protects against wear out, and the cables are now universal with Micro USB and lightning devices.
- I use the ones that add on to an existing cable, that way I'm not bound to one cable type. Snatched like 25 of them when they were $2 on AE.
  
  Clever, I haven't come across that.
- This exact type of adapter fried one of the USB C ports in my macbook pro, lol
  https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/motlhn/magnetic_usbc_cables_are_not_recommended/
  
  F
- I'm having trouble seeing how this works and what difference it offers compared to a regular cable. Don't you just plug a cable into the port regardless? Sorry for the silly question
  
  I think that the magnetic thing sits constantly in the port, so there's no risk the charging port gets filled with pocket lint.
- Same here... 6 years now and it's great.
- How do you the plugs eliminate fire risk?
  
  Keep them clean. There's no more inherent rush than a regular connector, since the magnetic ones are just the same with a magnet holding them in place instead of friction.
  Also, if they were to break, it's far easier to replace them instead of the port on the phone. I recommend the ones that are just adapters and not the whole cables though, since they let you use the cables you already own.
- You should use the usb until you can’t, wireless charging will burn out your battery and you’ll be in the same place you’re in now, but if your port stops working you’ll have the wireless to fall back on.
  
  You may have responded to the wrong comment.

It's me! New Cable!
- New cable was ineffective against bad port!
- Holup, is this real or fan art? When did they make Cable a twink?
- Fewer pouches, but still not zero pouches. This tracks.
  I'm suspicious of those feet though. They look biologically plausible and therefore wrong for the character.

German has a word for this: Wackelkontakt
- There is a synth module designed specifically to replicate this effect for audio jacks:
  https://bastl-instruments.com/eurorack/modules/wackel-kontakt
  
  I have enough DIY Wackelkontakte already without ever trying...
- Of course there is

I hear a lot of people saying to clean the port and I agree. I've found with usb c it's often very difficult to find something thin enough, but I've found a staple to be surprisingly good at the job
- The sharp end of a safety pin did it for me
  
  I use a disposable dental floss pick. The toothpick side is very narrow and no concern scratching too hard down in a port since it is plastic.
- Sewing pin
- The little pin that comes with phones to open the sim tray works well.
- Dry air can does the job pretty well too.
- This is the one thing that sucks about Apple going USB-C. Lightning is easier to clean for me and my pockets are a lint factory apparently.
  
  I have never been an apple user, but that lightning port always seemed like a good design. Seems way more durable than usb-c
- Yeah, it's surprising how much pocket fluff gets in there. If it no longer clicks into place, chances are it needs a good clean.
  
  I've started to train myself to put my phone in my pocket "upside down" with the charging port up. It collects much less pocket lint, but now I drop it more when I take it out and flip it around. I'm hoping that I get better at this soon.

I'm just looking at this picture of the Hulk wearing himself as a hat.

Get a dental pick and use it to pull the lint out of the charging port

I have had this happen so much more with USB-C than microUSB connectors. I think it's just a matter of how it locks in place. MicroUsb would very often (though not 100% of the time) have some prong like things on one side that held it in place better.
USB-C just kinda snaps over a tiny PCB and has room to wiggle around, which, at least in all the devices I've had break on me this way, the PCB itself becomes loose or even snaps off from constantly being flexed or jostled around by the cable.
They should put those little prong/wing things on the top and bottom (in a way that doesn't mess with the omnidirectional nature of the cable) of the metal oval to lessen this, IMO.
- Strange.. My experience has been the opposite of yours. I've actually not had a USB-c cable do this yet.
  
  Same. Never had this issue on any phone, actually...
  
  I've had it happen to plenty of USB-C devices, but I had far more issues with previous USB generations.
  Wireless charging tho is clutch as a backup charging method. Key word being backup.
- I have had multiple micro USB ports break, I have not yet encountered a broken USB C port.
- Part of the spec for the USB-C port is to not have any moving/flexing parts because that is like 1000% easier to design waterproof/water resistant portable devices for. So to keep with that, to implement your solution the prongs would have to be on the cable. And in that case it should be pretty doable. There's nothing stopping someone from designing an improved cable connector and throwing them on a new cable.

When we had real headphone jacks the phone lasted longer because you didn't use the same port for both audio and charging, wearing it out faster.
- It's time to move on. It's not coming back.

This is funny?
- Sadly funny, because everyone can relate at some point of their smartphone ownership.

...did you try cleaning the port?

I rolled over a brand new cable with my office chair. Now it does this. I’m forcing myself to use it for a year as penance.
- Hey. I’m going to ask why? Like if you are extremely tight financially I get it. But why make yourself suffer every day if it’s not needed? It’s going to be annoying and a slight negative to your day every day.
  
  Two reasons:
  Because I’m a filthy hippy and I don’t want to throw a brand new cord in the landfill because I fucked up.
  Dealing with it for a long enough time period will make me think of how I wrecked it and I won’t haphazardly leave my cables lying on the floor any more.
- 😂

A thin wooden toothpick (those rounded, not those flat), can do the job.
- I've seen a clip of someone putting a dab of hot glue then pulling it out as it cools. Been meaning to try it
  
  Depending on the materials used in the connector, this will either work, or fuck up your phone completely. If the hot glue sticks to anything built in, it's not going to come out coherently. Cleaning it out manually would be an absolute bitch.

Get a wireless charger. If your phone is less than ~6 years old it probably supports wireless charging. Can find them for as cheap as $10-15...
- So much easier.

I just used my new phone to take a picture of my old phones charging port, which worked only with some cables at certain angles, and, yeah... It's a horror show up in there

my phone charging port has been inoperable for years. wireless charging is the only thing keeping it alive

For me:
USB-B : always doing this rather quiclky
USB-C : never does this
What about you?
- I've never had issues with my printer's usb port.
- B 2.0 or B 3.0?
  
  B 3.6 x 3.2x3.2 version 6.1
  So about 5Gbps as usual.

I know that from microUSB but not from USB-C. You have dirt in it? Try to scoop it out with a paperclip.
- Flat wooden toothpick is safer and less likely to damage it

If your port is clean and the cable isn't messed up, maybe consider replacing the charging port or just get a wireless charger.
- This. Get super fine tweezers and clean the port. Almost always full of pocket lint.
  
  I use a slim tooth pick for port cleaning. Works perfectly!

I just bring it to a phone repair place, and they spend about five minutes in the back cleaning it for free.

Yeah my phone is in this stage, so I mostly charge it wirelessly now.

Used to deal with this a lot on my old phone (micro usb) cleaning the port out helped a lot, but it is hard if you don't have something thin enough to fit in, personally I used ESD tweezers I have on hand for electronics work, but even then I started having to do it once a week to get my phone to charge.

Get some needle-nosed tweezers or something very thin and use it to dig out the obscene amount of pocket lint that compacts itself down in there. Keep trying even if nothing comes out at first. This works for me every time.
- I've found that a plastic toothpick is the perfect tool for this. It is a soft enough material not to scratch the phone but it digs out the lint. A normal wood toothpick also works, but the plastic ones tend to be thinner making them easier to scrape with.
  If the phone is still having issues after that or looks visibly inside, some contact cleaner applied and scrubbed with a pipe cleaner will remove gunk.

Meanwhile my phone lowers the volume by itself an I'm thinking how to fix it. I assume it's because of dust or something. Annoying ah with this random popping out and lowering volume when I want sound.

My steam deck just started doing this....
- 9 times out of 10 it's just compacted dust in the charging port.
  
  or a bad/cheap charger. Rarely is it the socket itself
- Can a steam deck be charged wirelessly? I got a wireless charge pad for my Galaxy S-10e when the charge port started being wonky and it's worked for a few years now.
  If not, order a new charge port, it shouldn't be more than $15, and remember to remove your sim card before trying to disassemble the case.
  
  Can't be charged tirelessly, no

Don't you have to replace the device if it's USB C because the compliant mechanism is in the port, not the cable?
- Lint gets stuck in the base, so the cord will not properly seat. I've found that dental floss picks get in there great, and are non conductive.
  
  Charging ports are the belly buttons of the digital world.
- It could just be build up in the port. Throwing some sticky tack in there a bunch of times to pull out all the debris has "fixed" multiple devices for me.

For my old phone I would put a drop of super-glue on the face of the USB-C cable, and let it dry.

worst case scenario, the usb port is replaceable on most phones without soldering
- I tried this on my previous phone, Samsung S9, it made everything worse. I bought and replaced a daughterboard with usb, microphone, antenna, and some other stuff. I was very careful, know my way around electronics, found a perfect iFixit video instruction, but afterwards my antenna didn't work anymore. My partner told me to just take it to a repair shop and let a professional handle it. I tried two and they both said "we don't do dat repair because it's too difficult. It can't be done without breaking something else in the phone". So there it is
  
  i applied that fix multiple times on multiple phones, never an issue.
  maybe you got unlucky? and those are some shitty professionals that cant replace a dumb daughterboard.