I’ve seen sockets on iPads and cellphones nearly destroyed by people trying to push a too small connector into the sock… and bend the pins in the socket. Even those connectors - with an ever-so-slight bevel and one side being slightly shorter the other (think get out the magnifying glass slight) - have to be put in using adequate lighting. Half the time, my first try plugging one of these in, it’s upside down and I have to reverse this. And this was in 2020! (Happy New Year, everyone! (2021)). A few people have asked me to check out why their device wasn’t charging. It turned out as they would wrestle trying to get these dinky plugs into the socket, with all the wiggling trying to “hit the hole” and hopefully have it right side up, they’ve flexed the wires inside the cable at the plug that one or more broke internally. A simple swap with a new cord fixed the problem… until the same thing happens again.
A better design - maybe a curve on one side of the plug and a pointed side on the other would simplify that a lot. (<-|) How could one mess up something like that?
With the USB cables, the best thing they could do to improve it is not to have the entire plug black or whatever color, but have a colored circle, dot, or anything with a different color than the plug. Colored side up. For vertical sockets you would only have to figure out which “side” is “up” and you’re all set - unless you have a short memory.