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 andsize 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)

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 thatthis websitedecodes 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.