How to Decode iPhone Serial Number

Posted by ison Thursday, March 29, 2012 1 comments

In case you are not aware, the serial number provides some interesting information about your iPhone, including the week it was manufactured and the factory id.

Folks at OS X Daily tell us that the serial number on the iPhone tells you the week it was manufactured, the factory where it was made and somethings which you already know such as the color and the size of the storage.

The first step is to locate the Serial Number. The easiest way to find it is to open your Settings app and navigate to General -> About -> Serial Number. You should also see the Serial Number in the Summary tab in iTunes when your iPhone is connected to the computer.

Serial numbers come in the form AABCCDDDEEF which can be read as follows:

AA = Factory and machine ID
B = Year manufactured (simplified to final digit, 2010 is 0, 2011 is 1, etc)
CC = Week of production
DDD = Unique identifier
EEF = iPhone model, color of device and size of storage

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)

E00 (iPhone 4 White 32GB) - Courtesy IyonUK

For example, the serial 79049XXXA4S is from factory 79 (presumably Foxconn), was manufactured in 2010 in the 49th week, and is a black 16GB iPhone 4.

Note: It's not clear what's the last three characters for all the white iPhone 4 models. So if you have one do let us know.

Unfortunately, Apple has changed the serial number generation with the CDMA iPhone 4, so this is not applicable for the CDMA iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

But no worries, OS X Daily reader Michael points out that this website decodes the serial number of not only previous generation iPhones but also iPhone 4S (except it is wrongly reporting that our iPhone 4S is the sixth generation iPhone).

Let us know if you were able to decode your iPhone's serial number