I find this a strange problem but I can't find anything online about it.

Recently I purchased a few short USB cables (20-30cm), to use in my car's USB connector to charge my phone.

Strangely an older longer USB cable (1.2m), charges the phone fine (and the icon changes to show charging). With any of the short cables in the same USB slot no charging happens.

Both the long and the short cables are USB2 compatible.

I naturally assumed the short cables were faulty but connecting them to a PC or connecting to a high capacity external battery charging is successful using all the short cables and longer cables.

Hopefully someone here is able to give me an explanation of the problem and how I can overcome this and use a short cable where it is most appropriate.

Thanks