7 Ways To Know How Old is Your Phone

If you are planning to buy a used phone or trying to replace your old one, finding its age can assist you. Generally, manufacturers don’t put your phone’s age in its settings by default. But with some minor effort, it is quite simple to know how old your phone is.

You can easily discover your phone’s age by rummaging through the package box or serial number. In this article, you will learn different methods to know the age of your phone.

How to Know Your Phone’s Age?

If you have access to the purchase receipt of your phone, you can quickly find out when you purchased your phone. Or, if you used online banking as a payment method, you can easily see the transaction statement and know the purchase date. Meanwhile, you can also ask the seller for that information if you are buying a second-hand phone.

But, if you actually want to know the exact time the phone was manufactured, here are some methods you can try.

See Package Box of Your Phone

If you still have the package box of your phone, it is the easiest method to check its age. Not all, but a few manufacturers like OnePlus paste a sticker in its phone box with useful information like IMEI number and manufacturing date. Checking at the box, you can easily figure out the date it was produced.

Use Google Security Service

You certainly log in with your Google account on your phone after you purchase it. A Google account is necessary to get access to the Play Store and install the applications on your phone. You can also see when your Gmail account was first signed into your device and get an approximate idea about the time of purchase.

Follow these steps to know the first sign-in date of your Gmail account on your phone:

1. Go to My Account page of Google.
2. From the left pane, select Security tab.
   
3. Scroll down, and you will find Your devices section. Click over it.
   
4. Choose your phone whose manufactured date you wish to see.
5. You can see the first time you signed in to that device using your Google account beside First sign-in:
   

Use Device Specific Code

Some manufacturers like Samsung help check the manufacture date of your phone through the Radio frequency Calibration (RF Cal) date. Once your phone is manufactured, the sensors like proximity and gyroscope must be calibrated in order to work properly. It is done prior to the date the phone gets in your hand. So, it gives the best approximation of when your phone was produced.

Follow these steps to see the RF Cal date:

1. Open the dialer pad on your Phone.
2. Type the following code into the dialer pad *#12580*369#.
3. You will see a screen mentioning the Main version of your bootloaders and partition.
4. See for the date beside RF Cal. You will see the exact date when the sensors on your phone were calibrated. You can then approximate the age of your phone.
   

Use AppleCare Coverage Service

If you own an iPhone, you can officially check its age using the serial number from Apple’s website. To be exact, it will show you the expiration date of your iPhone, and you can figure out the manufacture date. It is safe since your serial number does not get into the wrong hands.

But, you must have the serial number of your iPhone beforehand. Follow the steps below:

1. On your iPhone, open Settings.
2. Tap General.
3. Under General settings page, tap About.
4. You will see your iPhone’s info like Model number and Serial number there.
   
5. Note down the Serial Number somewhere.
6. Now open the AppleCare Coverage website.
7. Type in the serial number in Enter your serial number text field.
   
8. Enter the Captcha code for verification.
9. Click Continue.
10. On the next page, under Repairs and Service Coverage section, you can see the Estimated Expiration Date.
    

Decode Your iPhone’s Serial Number

The other method to know the age of your iPhone is by decoding the serial number. Apple has been encoding the time of year the iPhone was made into the serial number. You can use the table below to decode the serial number and get a rough figure of when your iPhone was manufactured.

1. Follow the steps up to step 5 from the above method to get your serial number.
2. Then note down the fourth alphabet of the serial number.
   
3. Check the table below.
4. The former letter denotes (January – June) while the latter denotes (July – December).
5. For example, I have an iPhone X with a serial number LGHZXXXXXXXX. The fourth alphabet of my iPhone’s serial number is Z. It means my iPhone was manufactured between (July-December) of 2019.

Alphabets	Year
C and D	2010
F and G	2011
H and J	2012
K and L	2013
M and N	2014
P and Q	2015
R and S	2016
T and V	2017
W and X	2018
Y and Z	2019
D	2020

Use Phone Info Application

Different apps available on Play Store and App Store also help to reveal the manufacture date of your phone. All the apps you see on the search result may not work, so you need a hit-and-trial method to get the app that works for you.

You can search Phone Info or Device Info on your app store and install some of the applications. Once you install and open it, you can see the manufacture date and other technical details.

Use the IMEI Number of Your Phone

Every phone, either Android or iPhone, has a unique IMEI number to precisely identify your device worldwide. Some service providers help you find the manufacture date of your phone using the IMEI number as well.

They work and show you the date your phone was manufactured. But since the IMEI number is a sensitive and major security concern, we don’t recommend you enter your IMEI number on those third-party websites. But if other methods did not work for you and you are bound to know the manufacture date, you can use those websites at your own risk.

Follow the steps below to find the IMEI number of your phone:

1. Launch the dialer pad of your phone.
2. Type *#06#
3. It will show you the IMEI number of your phone.