You can easily know when a phone was launched, but finding the device’s exact manufacturing date is not that easy. There is no straight answer to this. Your device might have gone for sale after a long time of production or early. Every manufacturer has its own ways of marking manufacturing dates on their devices. In this article, we are going to list four methods through which you can know the manufacturing date of your phone. Some of these methods are complex and model specific, so there is a chance that they might not work for your device. Anyway, it’s better to give it a shot.
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Check the box
If you are looking for how old your phone is, the first thing you should do is check the box in which the phone was packed. While unboxing the phone, you must have noticed that there’s a white sticker on the phone box which has some words, numbers, barcodes, etc. Your phone’s manufacturing date will be written somewhere on the sticker.
While searching for the manufacturing date on the box, make sure to match the IMEI number of your device to the number written on the sticker. If both numbers match, it means that the manufacturing of the device is correct else you will get the wrong manufacturing date. In such cases, you can try other methods.
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Try decoding the serial number
Manufacturers such as Apple, Asus, etc., put the smartphone manufacturing date in the device serial number. Every number on these devices indicates a date, month, or something that helps you to find out the manufacturing date. You can find the serial number in the About section of your phone.
For example, third digit in Apple serial number refers to the last digit of the year and the fourth and fifth digits represent the week of the year of the device.
Serial number in Samsung devices represents the manufacturing date of the devices as well. The fourth digit represents the year and fifth digit represents the month of manufacturing.
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Similarly, you can search for such representations on the company’s website. If you are having problems understanding the serial number, you can skip to the next method.
Use a phone info app
This method will work mostly on Android phones but still you can give it a shot on your iPhone if it’s available on app store. These phone info apps extract details about your phone and tell you the age of your phone. You will have to give permission to these apps to read details about the phone. You can download apps like Device info, Droid hardware info, Phone info SAM, etc. To look for more such apps, you can go to Play Store and search for ‘Phone info app’.
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Try the manufacturing code
This is the last method to find the age of your phone. But, these manufacturing codes are not just limited to OEM specific but model specific as well. So, there is a chance that this trick does not work on your phone. Anyway, you can still give it a shot. To know the age of your phone using the manufacturing code, go to the Dialer of your phone and dial any of the codes below.
- *#197328640#*
- *#*#197328640#*#*
- *#0000#
If this method works then it will open a secret service menu on your phone. Now, go to Menu version information and then Hardware versions. Go to Read manufacturing date to know the exact manufacturing date of your phone.