I have had Android phones with USB-C and other USB-C devices like iPad Pro for many years now, and "dirt and sand can get into it" never even remotely crossed my mind. And yes they have been working just fine -- current phone is 3 years old and still doing well.

Antidotal and doesn’t dismiss my claim that lightning is more durable.

Every single lightning cable I've ever owned developed a black corrosion on a pin that prevented it from working. Every. single. one. You cannot claim that lightning is durable. It's completely farcical.

Never happened to me. In my experience lightning ports a as close to unbreakable as it gets given that size factor. In contrast every USB-C port seems to get loose or outright break after heavy usage (including lenovo and MacBooks). I will not miss having multiple cables but I will miss the snug and reliable fit that various lightning plugs/ports have maintained over years in my service. It's probably time to move to wireless charging anyways

Wireless stuff is neat I guess… but it takes up much more space and is much less efficient. The power loss alone seems like a big deal that we don’t really consider. Not to mention that it’s not really any more convenient than say MagSafe is. I find my phone uncharged in the morning far more often because I didn’t align it properly with the pad, than because my cable is going bad.

I will say, it’s nice letting my phone stand also charge it… so I’m also kinda a fan.

This is a surprisingly tough issue for me.

I could show you my collection of broken lightning cables where the plastic just before the "meat" of the connector is split, leading to visible copper/whatever cables. Which in turn leads to broken copper/whatever cables, which are at best broking the functionality, at worse dangerous (is it?).

* anecdotal

I thought that looked wrong. Damnit autocorrect. Thanks.

I've had several lightning cables fail from moisture getting from my fingers onto the exposed contacts and causing galvanic corrosion. The tube from USB-C seems to prevent that.

Ah that explains why all my cords have a really tarnished lead.

Are you sure its a tarnished lead? Lots of lightning cables have one tarnished lead (often on each side) from arcing. If I remember correctly using such a cable in a new iPhone could even damage the matching pin inside the phone, leading to the situation where it would start arcing on a non-broken cable (damaging the same leads on the new cable).

Who grabs a cable by the metal bit?

"Your average user" does.