You can easily find out when the phone was launched, but finding the exact production date of the device is not easy. There is no direct answer to this. Your device may have been listed for sale after or before a long production period. Each manufacturer has its own ways of marking the date of manufacture on their devices. In this article, we are going to list four methods by which you can find out the manufacturing date of your phone. Some of these methods are complex and model dependent, so chances are they may not work on your device. In any case, it’s better to try.
Check box
If you are looking for how old your phone is, the first thing you should do is note the box the phone was packed in. While unpacking your phone, you must have noticed a white sticker on the phone box that has some words, numbers, barcodes, etc. Somewhere on the sticker will be the manufacturing date of your phone.
When looking for the manufacturing date on the box, make sure your device’s IMEI number matches the one on the sticker. If both numbers match, it means that the device was manufactured correctly, otherwise you will get the wrong date of manufacture. In such cases, you can try other methods.
Try to decipher the serial number
Manufacturers such as Apple, Asus, etc. put down the date of manufacture of the smartphone in the serial number of the device. Each digit on these devices indicates a date, a month, or something that will help you find out the date of manufacture. You can find the serial number in the “About”section of your phone.
For example, the third digit in an Apple serial number refers to the last digit of the year, while the fourth and fifth digits represent the week in which the device was manufactured.
The serial number in Samsung devices also represents the manufacturing date of the devices. The fourth digit represents the year and the fifth digit represents the month of manufacture.
Similarly, you can search for such representations on the company’s website. If you are having trouble understanding the serial number, you can move on to the next method.
Use the information app for your phone
This method will work mostly on Android phones, but you can still try it on your iPhone if it’s available on the app store. These phone information apps extract information about your phone and tell you the age of your phone. You will need to give permission to these apps to read phone information. You can download apps like “Device Information”, “Droid Hardware Information”, “SAM Phone Information”, etc. To find more such apps, you can go to the Play Store and search for “App Information about the phone.
Try production code
This is the last way to find out the age of your phone. But these production codes are not only limited to OEM specificity, but also to a specific model. So there’s a chance this trick won’t work on your phone. Either way, you can still try. To find out the age of your phone using the production code, go to your phone’s dialer and dial any of the codes below.
- *#197328640#*
- *#*#197328640#*#*
- *#0000#
If this method works, it will open a secret service menu on your phone. Now go to menu version information and then to hardware versions. Go to the Read Manufacture Date section to find out the exact date of manufacture of your phone.