My experience differs from yours. I find the lightning port to be considerably robust. I drop my AirPods case fairly regularly and keep it in my jean pocket on

My experience differs from yours. I find the lightning port to be considerably robust. I drop my AirPods case fairly regularly and keep it in my jean pocket on work days (though I find myself not using them all too much). I charge my pods maybe once a week and don't have battery life problems. If the AirPods were only chargeable inductively, they would (presumably) take considerably longer to charge and thus impact my experience.