How to Tell Which Model an iPhone is

Though most iPhone owners know what which model they have, not everyone does, and sometimes you’ll come across an iPhone and have no idea what it is. This is usually because some iPhone models share the same enclosure, and because of that it can be very hard to differentiate them just by a first glance. For example, the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S look almost identical, the iPhone 3G and 3GS also look practically identical, and the iPhone 5 and it’s successor (5S?) are also likely to look basically the same. Thus, the easiest way to differentiate an iPhone when it’s not immediately obvious is by looking at the actual iPhone model number, then comparing that to a list of devices to determine what the iPhone actually is.

The other advantage to determining iPhone by model number is that you will be able to know what the device is even if the phone is turned off, meaning if the device is broken, won’t turn on, is bricked by some software issue, or has a dead battery, you’ll still be able to know what you’re working with. That is invaluable when performing iPhone repairs, both for knowing the proper parts to use, and also for restoring or updating through IPSW so that you can use the proper firmware for the device.

Find the iPhone Model Number on the Case

• Flip the iPhone over and look at the small text under the “iPhone” badge
• Make note of where it says “Model AXXXX” and compare that to the list below

This is the best approach to use, here’s where you will want to look and what to look for:

With that information you’ll want to match the model number up to the actual phone model, which is important for instances where it’s not immediately obvious by visible inspection.

iPhone Model Number List

• A1428 – iPhone 5 GSM (standard GSM model in USA for AT&T, T-Mobile, etc)
• A1429 – iPhone 5 GSM & CDMA (normal CDMA model in USA, Verizon, Sprint, etc)
• A1442 – iPhone 5 CDMA China
• A1387 – iPhone 4S, CDMA & GSM
• A1431 – iPhone 4S GSM China
• A1349 – iPhone 4 CDMA
• A1332 – iPhone 4 GSM
• A1325 – iPhone 3GS China
• A1303 – iPhone 3GS (GSM only)
• A1324 – iPhone 3G China
• A1241 – iPhone 3G (GSM only)
• A1203 – iPhone (Original model, GSM only)

The model numbers are also often the easiest way to differentiate CDMA vs GSM models if the device isn’t active on a cellular carrier to identify it that way, and that is especially true since many CDMA models also include a GSM compatible SIM card slot.

You can then use the model identification to discover which iPhone version the device is, and thus which firmware files to use:

• Phone 3G – iPhone1,2
• iPhone 3GS – iPhone2,1
• iPhone 4 (GSM)- iPhone3,1
• iPhone 4 (CDMA) - iPhone3,3
• iPhone 4S – iPhone4,1
• iPhone 5 (GSM/) – iPhone5,1
• iPhone 5 (CDMA) -iPhone5,2

If the model number is missing from the case for one reason or another, you can also retrieve model information from iTunes.

Finding the iPhone Model through iTunes

• Connect the iPhone to a computer (through USB or Wi-Fi sync)
• Select the iPhone from iTunes, and look under the “Summary” tab find the model of the device labeled clearly at the top

Keep in mind that iTunes won’t provide the technical model number, but it will provide you with the actual iPhone model name (i.e.: iPhone 6, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, etc) instead.

If you were hoping to find that info on the iPhone itself through iOS, it turns out that it’s just not there, despite detailed technical information like the modem firmware and baseband versions, order numbers, serial number, IMEI, and ICCID numbers. Curious, but that’s the way it is for now.

OS X Mavericks

• Apple
• Store
• Mac
• iPod
• iPhone
• iPad
• iTunes
• Support

• New Features
• Advanced Technologies

• iBooks
 
• Maps
 
• Calendar
 
• Safari
 
• iCloud Keychain
• Multiple Displays
 
• Notifications
 
• Finder Tabs
 
• Tags
 
• Advanced
  Technologies

OS X Mavericks begins a new chapter in the iBooks story. Now the books you’ve already downloaded on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch will automatically appear in iBooks on your Mac. And there are over 1.8 million more in the iBooks Store, ready for you to download with just a few clicks.1 Reading books is every bit as intuitive as it is on an iOS device — turn pages with a swipe, zoom in on images with a pinch, or scroll from cover to cover. If you’re a student hitting the books, keep as many open as you like and search through them with ease. When you quote an excerpt while writing a paper, iBooks adds a citation for you. And when you take notes, highlight passages, or add a bookmark on your Mac, iCloud pushes them to all your devices automatically. That way you have them on whichever one you take to class. iCloud even remembers which page you’re on. So if you start reading on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, you can pick up right where you left off on your Mac.2

• iBooks Store
• iBooks in iCloud
• Studying with iBooks
• Multiple Books

When you buy a book on your Mac, iCloud automatically pushes it to all your iOS devices. If you’re reading a book on your iPad and you highlight text or take notes, it’s all there when you continue reading on your Mac or iPhone. iCloud even remembers which page you’re on.

Now you’ve got the whole world on your desktop. The Maps app lets you use every pixel of your display to explore new destinations, and it takes full advantage of the graphics power of your Mac. So zooming is incredibly smooth and responsive. Text and details are crisp and easy to read. And you get gorgeous views such as Flyover, a photo-realistic, interactive 3D experience that lets you soar high above select cities. Maps makes it simple to get information on local points of interest like restaurants and hotels, showing you phone numbers, photos, and even Yelp reviews. It’s also easy to get there on time, thanks to point-to-point directions, real-time traffic conditions, and suggested alternate routes. When you’re ready to go, send your map to your iPhone for voice navigation on the way.3 With OS X Mavericks, maps are built into Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, too. So wherever you see an address, you can see it on a map, just like that.

• Features
• Flyover
• Local Search
• Send to iOS

Your choice

Three ways to get the lay of the land: standard, hybrid, and satellite views.

Real-time traffic

Road conditions and incident reports help you choose your route.

Bookmarks

Visit your favorite places with a click.

Calendar is streamlined with a fresh new look and powerful features to go with it. Continuous scrolling lets the weeks and months flow by smoothly, so you can look at the last half of one month and the first half of the next one. A new event inspector makes it even simpler to create and edit events by suggesting addresses and points of interest when you start typing in the location field. It shows your event’s location on a map, calculates travel time, and displays a weather forecast. So you can quickly see where to go, how long it takes to get there, and whether you’ll need an umbrella.

• Week View
• New Inspector
• Month View

Facebook events

They appear right in your calendar.

Travel time

See how long it takes to get to your next event.

Safari in OS X Mavericks delivers blazing performance and introduces breakthrough technologies. Innovative new features make it simple to return to sites you visit often — and discover new sites as well. Shared Links in the new Sidebar shows links posted by people you follow on Twitter and LinkedIn, so you can keep up with interesting new content. And with the redesigned Top Sites, it’s easy to organize your favorites. There are also unique advancements under the hood. Thanks to the new Nitro Tiered JIT and Fast Start technologies in Safari, the web pages you visit feel snappier and more responsive. Browsing the web can take a toll on battery life, but with new power-saving technologies, you won’t waste energy on web pages in the background or plug-in content you don’t want to see. In OS X Mavericks, Safari is simply the best way to surf.

• Top Sites
• Sidebar
• Shared Links

It’s easier than ever to organize your favorite websites in Top Sites. Now you can add sites from your bookmarks and rearrange the thumbnails by dragging them wherever you want.

Performance

• SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark
• JSBench Suite Benchmark

• Safari
  1.44x faster
• Firefox
  1.17x faster
• Chrome
  Baseline

•  
•  
• 1
•  
• 2

Advanced optimizations in Safari speed up JavaScript execution.4

Efficiency

• Memory Usage
• CPU Energy Usage

• Safari
  Baseline
• Chrome
  1.28x more memory usage
• Firefox
  1.30x more memory usage

•  
•  
• 1
•  
• 2

Memory management technologies help Safari — and the rest of your system — stay responsive.6

Remembering your passwords can be a real pain. But now iCloud Keychain remembers them for you.2 It stores your website user names and passwords on the devices you’ve approved, protects them with robust AES 256-bit encryption, and keeps them up to date on each device. And it automatically fills them in whenever and wherever you need them.3 The new Password Generator suggests unique, hard-to-guess passwords for your online accounts. iCloud Keychain works with credit card information too, so checking out is a snap. Juggling passwords has never been so simple. Because now you don’t have to.

• Password Generator
• Quick Credit Card Entry
• All Your Devices

Whenever you need to come up with a new password for a website, Password Generator suggests a unique, hard-to-guess password and saves it to your iCloud Keychain. It’s filled in automatically — you won’t have to remember it or type it.

OS X Mavericks takes full advantage of every display connected to your Mac, giving you even more flexibility to work the way you want. There’s no longer a primary or secondary display — now each has its own menu bar, and the Dock is available on whichever screen you’re working on. You can have multiple app windows running on either display. Or run an app full screen on each one. Even show a desktop on one display and a full-screen app on another. Mission Control can give you a bird’s-eye view, making it easy to drag what you want where you want it. You can even drag it across the room, because now AirPlay and Apple TV can wirelessly turn your HDTV into a fully functional display.

• Menu Bars and Dock
• Full-Screen Apps
• Mission Control
• AirPlay Display

Each display has its own menu bar, and the Dock is available wherever you need it —
no configuration required.

Notifications let you see what’s up — and now they let you get things done, all without leaving the app you’re in. With OS X Mavericks, you can interact with your notifications, so you can reply to a message, respond to a FaceTime video call, or delete an email right from a notification. In addition, you can now sign up with your favorite websites to get breaking news, sports scores, auction alerts, and more — even if Safari isn’t running.8 And if you’ve stepped away from your Mac, you’ll find a summary of all the notifications you missed as soon as you return.

• Interactive Notifications
• Updates from Websites
• While You Were Away

Now when you receive an email, message, or FaceTime call, you can respond without having to leave the app you’re in.

Finder Tabs help you declutter your desktop by consolidating multiple Finder windows into one. You could keep a tab for Documents, one for AirDrop, and one for Back to My Mac, all in a single Finder window. You can switch between tabs, customize views, and reorder them however you like. To move a file from tab to tab, just drag and drop. And now you can even expand a Finder window to full screen and effortlessly move files wherever you want.

Tags are a powerful new way to organize and find your files, even documents stored in iCloud. Simply tag files you want to organize together with a keyword, like “Important.” Then when you want to find those files, just click Important in the Finder sidebar or enter it in the search field. Tag a file once, or give it multiple tags to assign it to multiple projects. If you have documents stored in multiple iCloud libraries, tags let you group them together into projects. So if you’re planning an event, you could tag the guest list you saved in Numbers, the flyer you designed in Pages, and the presentation you created in Keynote, and see them all with just one click — organized as a single project in a single Finder window.

• Tags in Finder
• Tags in Apps
• Tags in iCloud

Click to tag

Create a new tag name or use an existing one.

Tag list

To see all the files with a particular tag, just click it.

Search by tag

Type in the Finder to see a tag token.

OS X Server includes a number of innovations that will help the people who use your network as well as the people who manage it. The new features in Xcode Server make it easier than ever for a Mac or iOS development team to create robust, reliable software, thanks to continuous integration, testing, and repository hosting services. Caching Server 2 speeds up the download and delivery of software through the App Store, Mac App Store, and iTunes Store, and it can now cache on your server for faster downloading to iOS 7 devices. And Profile Manager has an array of new management features for iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks that simplify software distribution of apps and books.

With OS X Mavericks, your Mac works even smarter. Energy-saving technologies help you get more out of your battery, and performance-boosting technology brings you more speed and responsiveness. It’s power wielded wisely.