I have a dongle hanging off my desk that has an ethernet cable plugged into one end of it and a keyboard and desk-fan plugged into the side. This dongle is attached to my laptop[1] and my laptop is effectively immobile 'cause quarantine. I plug and unplug my dongle perhaps once a month[2], otherwise it remains in place and my computer doesn't shift - neither is there any significant force on the ethernet cable other than gravity, there is plenty of slack. The cable is slightly cocked out of the socket with one side of the casing resting against the body of the laptop and the other side a few millimeters out. The gravity of the dongle hanging in this position for just over a year has slowly weakened the grip of the connector from what I can tell visually but there are no problems with the socket actually reading data off the connector that I've ever noticed.
The issue is a compounded one - most laptops come with two or maybe three USB-C ports with the expectation that you'll dongle the crap out of them - they may be more stable than USB-A sockets but they suffer a lot more wear from the need from dongles which comes about due to the lessening of ports available. So USB-C might be a lot more reliable if manufacturers didn't fetishize trying to provide the absolute smallest number of ports possible but as things are the UX today is far worse than the UX five or ten years ago when I'd have a litany of ports to plug in whatever I need.
I hate dongles and they work absolutely terribly with USB-C, give me a mix of USB-A and USB-C connectors so I can plug in everything without a dongle and I'd be happy as a clam. I thought I'd write this out just due to the fact that mistook a bad UX as a purely port based technical issue - I can't say I've had too many problems specifically with the USB-C connectors but every time I've had to use USB-C connectors it's been a terrible experience - if you follow what I'm saying? I think you may be quite correct about reliability but also missed the compounding factor.
1. Which rests on a laptop stand to angle the device to a better reading level
2. Every time the internet goes out the dongle fails to automatically reconnect for some reason I can't be arsed to figure out
The issue is a compounded one - most laptops come with two or maybe three USB-C ports with the expectation that you'll dongle the crap out of them - they may be more stable than USB-A sockets but they suffer a lot more wear from the need from dongles which comes about due to the lessening of ports available. So USB-C might be a lot more reliable if manufacturers didn't fetishize trying to provide the absolute smallest number of ports possible but as things are the UX today is far worse than the UX five or ten years ago when I'd have a litany of ports to plug in whatever I need.
I hate dongles and they work absolutely terribly with USB-C, give me a mix of USB-A and USB-C connectors so I can plug in everything without a dongle and I'd be happy as a clam. I thought I'd write this out just due to the fact that mistook a bad UX as a purely port based technical issue - I can't say I've had too many problems specifically with the USB-C connectors but every time I've had to use USB-C connectors it's been a terrible experience - if you follow what I'm saying? I think you may be quite correct about reliability but also missed the compounding factor.
1. Which rests on a laptop stand to angle the device to a better reading level
2. Every time the internet goes out the dongle fails to automatically reconnect for some reason I can't be arsed to figure out