Tuesday, January 17, 2006
IMEI Retrieval
Posted by Darius Wey in "ARTICLE" @ 04:00 AM
I get shot a question on IMEIs from time to time, so I thought I'd address it here.
The IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) is a 15-digit unique identification code used to identify a mobile phone on a GSM network, and over the years, it has proven to be highly successful in reducing the deleterious effects of phone theft. However, like all things in life, it has its flaws, but that's not the point of this article. So, how else might an IMEI be useful? Some consumers use it as their little identification tag when handing their phones to "very-shady-and-somewhat-approved" service centres. Some developers use it as their licensing backbone when constructing a particular service or application for use on a phone. Whatever the case, the process of IMEI retrieval is uniform, although I should mention that programmatically, it's a whole different ball game.
From a user perspective, you can choose from one of two easily accessible options:
(1) Yank the battery out. Beneath it, on the compliance plate, there should be a label with all the beans.
(2) Open the dialing interface of your device (in Windows Mobile, select Start > Phone) and enter *#06#. This sequence allows you to retrieve the IMEI of most GSM devices without having to power them down (see pointless, censored screenshot above). Note that the *#06# sequence may yield a 17-digit code of which the last two digits are usually meaningless, so feel free to ignore them.
There we go! It's so simple that even Steve Jobs would approve. ;-)
The IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) is a 15-digit unique identification code used to identify a mobile phone on a GSM network, and over the years, it has proven to be highly successful in reducing the deleterious effects of phone theft. However, like all things in life, it has its flaws, but that's not the point of this article. So, how else might an IMEI be useful? Some consumers use it as their little identification tag when handing their phones to "very-shady-and-somewhat-approved" service centres. Some developers use it as their licensing backbone when constructing a particular service or application for use on a phone. Whatever the case, the process of IMEI retrieval is uniform, although I should mention that programmatically, it's a whole different ball game.
From a user perspective, you can choose from one of two easily accessible options:
(1) Yank the battery out. Beneath it, on the compliance plate, there should be a label with all the beans.
(2) Open the dialing interface of your device (in Windows Mobile, select Start > Phone) and enter *#06#. This sequence allows you to retrieve the IMEI of most GSM devices without having to power them down (see pointless, censored screenshot above). Note that the *#06# sequence may yield a 17-digit code of which the last two digits are usually meaningless, so feel free to ignore them.
There we go! It's so simple that even Steve Jobs would approve. ;-)
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