Apple’s New Purple iPhone 12 Is The First Product With A Randomized Serial Number

Apple’s recently-released purple iPhone 12 Pro is the first to mark a transition to randomized serial numbers, according to a report.

MacRumors first outed Apple’s new serial number system, and it today noted that the purple iPhone 12 is now the first product to use the 10-character serial number format.

With assistance from Aaron Zollo, host of the YouTube channel ZolloTech, we can confirm that the purple iPhone 12 released last month has a new 10-character serial number format, compared to the usual 12 characters for most other Apple products. Apple previously said its randomized serial numbers would initially be 10 characters long, so the purple iPhone 12 appears to be the first Apple product with a randomized serial number.

While this has only been confirmed for the purple iPhone 12 at this point it’s highly likely that the smaller iPhone 12 mini is also now using the same serial number format. AirTags, also recently released, don’t use the new format however.

With Apple’s newly refreshed iMac, iPad Pro, and Apple TV 4K still yet to ship we’ll have to wait and see whether they also use the new format.

The switch to a random string for serial numbers means that people will no longer be able to work out information including a device’s model, color, or storage capacity based on its serial number.

You may also like to check out:

You can follow us on Twitter, or Instagram, and even like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple, and the Web.