Dammit. Looks like it's a mix of the cable being bad and the plug itself. I can get a cable to work, but only if I put pressure on it from an angle while it's connected to the phone. I feel like over time the 5 metal contacts in the cord that are supposed to rise up to meet the contacts in the phone get depressed, so they no longer touch the phone's contacts.
I hate microUSB.
I've had a number of these break over the past year as well. I admit to subjecting the cables to some abuse due to the furniture and available wall outlet arrangement in my living room contributing to tripping hazards for charging phones. Our USB cables are frequently getting kicked or tripped over, pulling the phone from a tabletop or chair onto our hardwood floors. We've got small kids and pets in the house, so it's hard to avoid this problem without rearranging the living room.
I too initially thought we had damaged the receptacles on our phones from the repeated drops with the USB cord connected. Swapping cables seemed to show that the problem was the cable, not the phone.
I was curious about what actually broke in the cable that was supplied with my wife's Samsung Stratosphere. I cracked open the covering on the micro-USB connector and what I found was rather surprising. These cords are built incredibly flimsy. It seems the outer metal portion of the connector seems to be an active electrical connection (probably a ground?). Inside the plastic covering was a big ugly blob of solder connecting the exposed portion of the connector to a thin copper foil material. This solder blob had a crack all the way through it. When the connector is flexed a certain way, it would cause this solder blob to make contact again, restoring continuity in the cable. I'm 99.9% positive this is the reason for the behavior you noted here. I'd bet most cables are built similarly and it's why we're seeing problems. Applying pressure, positioning the phone a certain way, or looking at the phone cross-eyed can cause intermittent connection and disconnection because of this broken solder joint.
I was able to successfully solder this connection back together on my wife's Samsung cable and function returned to normal afterward, but the connector cover was damaged when I removed it and wouldn't snap back on. I held it in place and wrapped it tightly in electrical tape. Looked ghetto, but it worked. Eventually, much quicker this time, it broke again and I just threw the cable out rather than try to repair it again.
I never had this problem with my old Droid X that I can recall and I only recently started having trouble with this on my Droid Bionic. My wife started having problems after around 6 months with her Stratosphere. Some things I have noted with this behavior. My Droid X always had a good solid connection with the connector, but my Droid Bionic has always had a little more slop in the connection. With the X, the connector didn't move around much once plugged in, but the Bionic has always had more wobble to the connector. The Stratosphere has a reasonably secure connection, but it seems like the connector on the phone is recessed deeper because of the design of the casing. Perhaps the looser or deeper connections create a situation where it puts a more severe load on the connector during falls or other bending loads? Just speculation and maybe just coincidence.
To see if this is maybe the same problem you're having with your cables, I've noticed that on my cables that are damaged you can visibly move the micro connector with respect to the covering much more than you can with unbroken cables.
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