My wife broke the USB C port on my T470 when she threw a cushion at me (i was winding her up over something). It tore the connector shell off the board and lifted traces when the cushion landed fairly lightly on it after hitting me. Fortunately it has an old style charging port so I just use that. I didn’t use it for anything else.
But cheap USB-C connectors are crap. And USB-C connectors that are mounted on the motherboard of the device are a sin (Apple don’t do this - well done Apple!)
That really does seem like an implementation issue and not a connector standard issue. Connectors should at least be secured with through-hole pins for the casing IMHO.
They were on this machine. 4 through hole anchors. The shell deformed and ripped the other pins out. The issue is the mechanical leverage vs an 8 layer board vs connector sizing.
I've got a sad single port macbook on my desk here that has issues as the plug hole seems to have got wider and it doesn't make connections reliably with cables that plug into monitors.
I don’t know how it happened (never dropped it or yanked the cord hard or anything like that), but I’ve had the little USB-C tongue thing get a slightly bent downwards in the port which made it very difficult to plug in. I’ve seen a lot of other comments on the internet about how it breaks easily (it’s a common argument whenever this topic comes up on r/Android or r/Apple). I’ve never personally had a port fully break on me, but I could see it happening.
I had a Macbook where the power cord got stepped on, the cable head turned 45º or so and continued to function with no port damage whatsoever.