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Determine Device Type – 3G or 3GS / iPod First or Second Generation

Posted on August 24, 2009 by John Muchow in Device

Using the UIDevice class, you can figure out if your application is running on a iPod or an iPhone. To get this information, access the property named model which will return an NSString of iPhone or iPod touch. However, there may be times when you need more specifics, for example is the iPhone the latest device, a 3GS or on the flip side, is the iPod a first or second generation device?

Accessing the system hardware will reveal the information we need to make the above distinctions. We’ll use a category to extend the UIDevice class with a method that returns the “machine” type as a string. Begin with the interface definition below:

@interface UIDevice(machine)
- (NSString *)machine;
@end

To access the hardware type we’ll call a function in the standard C library:

sysctlbyname(const char *name, void *oldp, size_t *oldlenp, void *newp, size_t newlen);

Read more about sysctlbyname.

The first parameter is the name of the system information we are after. The information will be copied into the buffer ‘oldp’ and we specify the size of this buffer in the ‘oldlenp’ parameter. We set ‘newp’ to NULL as this is for setting a value (versus getting a value). On a similar note, we set ‘newlen’ to 0, as that is reserved for calls to set information.

Putting all that together into, the implementation of our class looks as follows:

#import "UIDevice+machine.h"
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/sysctl.h>
 
@implementation UIDevice(machine)
 
- (NSString *)machine
{
  size_t size;
 
  // Set 'oldp' parameter to NULL to get the size of the data
  // returned so we can allocate appropriate amount of space
  sysctlbyname("hw.machine", NULL, &size, NULL, 0); 
 
  // Allocate the space to store name
  char *name = malloc(size);
 
  // Get the platform name
  sysctlbyname("hw.machine", name, &size, NULL, 0);
 
  // Place name into a string
  NSString *machine = [NSString stringWithCString:name];
 
  // Done with this
  free(name);
 
  return machine;
}
 
@end

We can now call the new method as follows:

#import "UIDevice+machine.h"
 
...
 
NSLog(@"device: %@", [[UIDevice currentDevice] machine]);

The return values will be as follows:

iPhone Simulator == i386
iPhone == iPhone1,1
3G iPhone == iPhone1,2
3GS iPhone == iPhone2,1
4 iPhone == iPhone3,1
1st Gen iPod == iPod1,1
2nd Gen iPod == iPod2,1
3rd Gen iPod == iPod3,1

The following images show the output in Xcode (running in the simulator) and on my 3G iphone:

Comments

25 Responses to “Determine Device Type – 3G or 3GS / iPod First or Second Generation”

john says:

August 25, 2009 at 3:16 am

Thanks for this. I was looking how to do this but never quite got there – thought it would be something that was available in the normal SDK without having to dig about in sysctl.

[Reply]
Terrance Kennedy says:

August 27, 2009 at 1:31 am

Yeah, Thanks John.
Could you possibly upload the project file, so that others can dig deeper into the code, settings, etc.

Thanks!

Terrance

[Reply]
John Muchow says:

August 27, 2009 at 2:36 pm

Hi Terrance,

Using the code is as easy as creating a new file with the name UIDevice+machine.h and add the interface definition shown above. Then create another file: UIDevice+machine.m and paste in the implementation code. Save these files and import into your project (or you can create the files within Xcode).

To use the new class, add #import “UIDevice+machine.h” to your class and call [[UIDevice currentDevice] machine]

John

[Reply]
wiz says:

August 28, 2009 at 10:32 am

Thank you verrrry much.

[Reply]
Terrance Kennedy says:

August 28, 2009 at 3:31 pm

Excellent!
Thanks again John!

Terrance

[Reply]
doblezeta says:

December 3, 2009 at 8:47 am

Thanks for this. Was googling around for a solution and yours was the simplest, and it works.

[Reply]
Thinh Trieu says:

December 28, 2009 at 5:01 am

Thank you for this. You’re a genius :)

[Reply]
olof says:

January 11, 2010 at 12:07 pm

Thanks for a great tutorial

Is this App Store Safe?

/Olof

[Reply]
John Muchow Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
olof, this could does not use private api’s so I assume there are no worries regarding app approval

[Reply]
olof says:

January 14, 2010 at 5:45 am

Great! Thanks for sharing this code.

/Olof

[Reply]
Doug says:

July 25, 2010 at 5:09 pm

Updated device list:

iPhone Simulator == i386
iPhone == iPhone1,1
3G iPhone == iPhone1,2
3GS iPhone == iPhone2,1
1st Gen iPod == iPod1,1
2nd Gen iPod == iPod2,1

1st Gen iPad == iPad1,1
iPhone 4 == iPhone3,1

I imagine the iPod Touch 4 will be == iPod3,1
and the 2011 next generation iPad will be == iPad2,1

[Reply]
glenn says:

August 23, 2010 at 3:09 pm

fantastic! any way to tap into this info via JavaScript in safari?

[Reply]
adrian says:

October 6, 2010 at 4:39 pm

just another reason to love categories.
such a great invention

[Reply]
Joe says:

November 18, 2010 at 12:03 pm

Just a quick update to the code.

NSString *machine = [NSString stringWithCString:name];

The stringWithCString appears to be deprecated. Just swap that line with:

NSString *machine = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:name];

[Reply]
Aleksandr says:

November 30, 2010 at 9:31 am

Thank you John Muchow. And TY Joe for update.

[Reply]
Byron says:

December 31, 2010 at 1:27 pm

this is a little bit nit picky, but I’d recommend creating the temp string on the stack instead of on the heap with malloc. I doubt hw.machine will ever return a string larger than 128 or so.

this method would then be fewer lines of code:
```
size_t size;
char name[128];
sysctlbyname("hw.machine", name, &amp;size, NULL, 0);
return [[NSString stringWithUTF8String:name] autorelease];
```
[Reply]
Ivan Vučica Reply:
February 22nd, 2011 at 5:48 am
Instead of shortening the code (and breaking in case someone does decide hw.machine should be something longer than 128), I suggest that it may be a good idea to even add a check for failure of sysctlbyname() to the original code. In case Apple removes “hw.machine” on a future iOS or on a future device, the app would cease to function on that device.

[Reply]
Roi says:

February 10, 2011 at 4:33 am

That’s a great code. Thanks a lot!!!
By the way the iPod Touch 4 is identified as iPod4,1

[Reply]
Mr.Black says:

March 5, 2011 at 10:18 pm

Great Thanks!!

[Reply]
bsd2 says:

June 8, 2011 at 2:06 pm

This code works great, but iPad2 is not recognized properly with iPad2,1 or iPad1,2…. I ended up checking for the small screen and retina display and just using an else to handle the iPad cases, which is working great. Just wanted to let you guys know, and I’d be curious to know what the actual param is to get the iPad2 for future reference, never know when you’ll need it!

[Reply]
Ivan Vučica Reply:
June 9th, 2011 at 5:00 am
Hey, bsd2,

I’d love to know the device name for iPad and iPad2. If you’re using the above code, you could use:

NSLog(“%@”, [UIDevice machine]);

to find out the device name, as returned by sysctl “hw.machine”. Please tell us what the device name is on both iPads!

[Reply]
bsd2 says:

June 9, 2011 at 8:36 am

Thanks Ivan.

Ipad1 = “iPad1,1″
Ipad2 = “iPad2,3″

But is every iPad2 the same hardware code?

Thanks,
Jeremy

[Reply]
bsd2 says:

June 9, 2011 at 8:56 am

Here’s some code you can use with everything laid out nicely with defines… this is UIDevice+machine.h
UIDevice+machine.m (remains unchanged..)
———————————————–
#define IPHONE_SIM @”i386″ //480×320 res

#define IPHONE_BASE@”iPhone1,1″ //480×320 res
#define IPHONE_3G @”iPhone1,2″ //480×320 res
#define IPHONE_3GS@”iPhone2,1″ //480×320 res
#define IPHONE_4G @”iPhone3,1″ //960×640 res (retina display)

#define IPOD_GEN1 @”iPod1,1″ //480×320 res
#define IPOD_GEN2 @”iPod2,1″ //480×320 res
#define IPOD_GEN3 @”iPod3,1″ //480×320 res
#define IPOD_GEN4 @”iPod4,1″ //960×640 res (retina display)

#define IPAD1 @”iPad1,1″ //1024×768 res (hd)
#define IPAD2 @”iPad2,3″ //1024×768 res (hd)

@interface UIDevice(machine)
- (NSString *)machine;
@end

———————— (CheckScreen.h)———————-
@interface CheckScreen : NSObject

{
@public
BOOL isSmallScreen;
BOOL isRetinaScreen;
CheckScreen *checkScreen;
}

-(BOOL)isSmallScreen;
-(BOOL)isRetinaScreen;

@end

———————— (CheckScreen.m)———————-
#import “CheckScreen.h”
#import “UIDevice+machine.h”

@implementation CheckScreen

- (BOOL)isSmallScreen
{

if ([[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPHONE_SIM] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPHONE_BASE] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPHONE_3G] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPHONE_3GS] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPOD_GEN1] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPOD_GEN2] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPOD_GEN3] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPHONE_4G] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPOD_GEN4]
)

{
isSmallScreen = 1;
}

else
{
isSmallScreen = 0;
}

return isSmallScreen;

}

- (BOOL)isRetinaScreen
{

if ([[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPHONE_4G] ||
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] machine] isEqualToString: IPOD_GEN4])

{
isRetinaScreen = 1;
}

else
{
isRetinaScreen = 0;
}

return isRetinaScreen;

}

@end

———————————————-(then ask the device to do something anywhere…)

CheckScreen *checkScreen = [[CheckScreen alloc] autorelease];

if([checkScreen isSmallScreen]) {
do something….
}

else{
do something….
}

[Reply]
Roi says:

June 9, 2011 at 9:06 am

According to http://www.everymac.com iPad2,2 represents an iPad 2 (Wi-Fi/GSM/A-GPS) for example of AT&T and iPad2,3 represents an iPad 2 (Wi-Fi/CDMA/A-GPS) for example of Verizon

[Reply]
ThomasW says:

December 7, 2011 at 4:50 am

iPhone 4S identifies itself as “iPhone4,1″.
on Lion the simulator identifies itself as “x86_64″.

[Reply]

Determine Device Type – 3G or 3GS / iPod First or Second Generation

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