Spectre screen flicker

[orangepenguin]

I am having 2 problems with my Spectre x360 (Intel Core i7-7500U); I am not sure if they are related but they are both making it increasingly difficult to use my laptop.  When I bought it about 2 years ago, the power cable would only work after some jiggling in the port. I assumed this was just a standard flaw with usb-c power cords since I had never used one before. Since then it has required increasingly aggressive jiggling to connect and I am concerned that I am damaging the laptop.

After using the laptop for a couple months, the screen began flickering with horizontal stripes that are more pronounced toward the bottom of the screen. I discovered that dimming the display slightly made the flickering stop. This problem has also gotten worse over time and has required dimmer and dimmer settings for the flickering to stop. It is now intermittently flickering even on the dimmest setting and is barely readable. The I plugged the laptop into an external display while it was flickering and there was no such distortion on the other display, which makes me thing this is a hardware problem. Could the jiggling have created the screen flicker by dislodging some internal parts?

What is mostly upsetting is that this laptop was not cheap and the defect was there  from day one. I did not take advantage of the warranty at the time because the problems seemed like minor inconveniences that I did not anticipate  would soon render my laptop essentially useless.

Is there a known solution to the problems my laptop is experiencing? Is there something I can do myself that will fix it? Since my warranty is expired and I can not afford to pay for repairs,  I have no hesitations with opening up the laptop to fix/replace/reconnect something myself if I know what I am looking for. 

[Echo_Lake]

@orangepenguin

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