Does My IMEI Number Mean Anything
Yes it really means a lot if you dont know. Is too Bad that most NIGERIANS and many others out there don't know sincerely the significance of their IMEI number. They see it more often as a mere number that comes along with the goody bag. The only few who knows little about it erroneously thinks that the first five or six numbers are just encoded representation of the location where the phone was manufactured and assert it to it as being a predisposing factor to low quality product that comes from such location.
Lets get it straight here. know that the location of the manufacturer is not encoded into your mobile phone IMEI number, the funny thing here is that, Not even your phone manufacturer assigns IMEI number.Most of these mobile phone manufacturer receive IMEI numbers from external regulatory body.
THEORETHICAL EXPLANATION OF YOUR IMEI NUMBER
Theoretically the first two(2) digits ***(..i.e. 35) represent the National Association or regulatory body that assigns the IMEI number, though in practice the worldwide GSM Association now issues all IMEIs and shows the British Approvals Board of Telecommunications, though all IMEIs in the world currently begin 35...The details that accounts for all IMEIs ever since 1st -Jan- 2004 are as follows:
The next six digits discloses the device type for example, 640602 is a Nokia N96, 808201 is a Nokia N82;etc.) - this together with the first two numbers are called the Type Allocation Code (TAC).
The rest six digits are unique serial number assigned to a particular device and are commonly known as "check-digit". No two mobile phones have the same Check digit.
And So...
And so also take note that, not all N96s have that IMEI series, high-volume sellers might move to a new IMEI series when one is exhausted, or the manufacturer could have different device variants using different IMEI series (such as N95-1, N95-2, N95-3...).(does that makes some sense to you?...)
Back then when mobile phones started making trends in communication it was very common and likely for an IMEI number to have seventeen digits, the last two digits probably encoded as "software version" - right now things have changed since there is a constant change of software version can be updated, even before we could update our phones ourselves.
This is a useful page for information on IMEI numbers:
You can check here for more http://www.gsm-security.net/faq/imei-international-mobile-equipment-identity-gsm.html
