Did you know that your iPhone’s serial number says a lot about your device? It isn’t just a random string of digits. It reveals the factory in which your device was built, the year it was manufactured, its unique identifier, and more. Here’s how to decode your iPhone’s serial number.
Serial number are presented in the form AABCCDDDEEF, and this is what those letters represent:
- AA = Factory and machine ID
- B = Year manufactured (this is simplified to the final digit, which means 0 = 2010; 1 = 2011; etc.)
- CC = Week of production
- DDD = Unique identifier (not the same thing as the Unique Device Identifier, or UDID)
- EE = Model and color of device
- F = Storage capacity of the device (S = 16GB; T = 32GB)
So if your serial number was 79049XXXA4S, the first to number would indicate it was assembled in factory 79 — presumably a Foxconn factory, which assembles all of Apple’s iPhones — in 2010 during week 49. A4 means it’s a black iPhone 4, while the S suggests it packs 16GB of storage.
However, some older iPhones employ a slightly different labeling scheme, according to OS X Daily. On the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, the letter K may refer to 16GB of storage as opposed to the letter S. The labeling scheme is also different on the CDMA iPhone 4 built for Verizon, and on the new iPhone 4S.
But OS X Daily provides this handy list of suffixes, which will tell you whether your device employes the labeling system detailed above. If its serial begins with any of these three letters, the method above will apply:
VR0 (iPhone 2G Silver 4GB)
WH8 (iPhone 2G Silver 8GB)
0KH (iPhone 2G Silver 16GB)
Y7H (iPhone 3G Black 8GB)
Y7K (iPhone 3G Black 16GB)
3NP (iPhone 3GS Black 16GB)
3NR (iPhone 3GS Black 32GB)
3NQ (iPhone 3Gs White 16GB)
3NS (iPhone 3Gs White 32GB)
A4S (iPhone 4 Black 16GB)
A4T (iPhone 4 Black 32GB)
