Manbolo Blog

If you need a human readable description of an iOS device, check out UIDevice+Hardware category on GitHub. Previously, I was using Erica Sadun’s various categories on UIDevice but the last commit happened a year ago. UIDevice+Hardware seems simpler and more up to date.

The core of the code relies on Apple’s internal naming:

- (NSString*)hardwareString
{
    size_t size = 100;
    char *hw_machine = malloc(size);
    int name[] = {CTL_HW,HW_MACHINE};
    sysctl(name, 2, hw_machine, &size, NULL, 0);
    NSString *hardware = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:hw_machine];
    free(hw_machine);
    return hardware;
}

The code is straightforward but could be a lot simpler by using a lookup table. Instead of this:

- (NSString*)hardwareSimpleDescription
{
    NSString *hardware = [self hardwareString];
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone1,1"])    return @"iPhone 2G";
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone1,2"])    return @"iPhone 3G";
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone2,1"])    return @"iPhone 3GS";
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone3,1"])    return @"iPhone 4";
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone3,2"])    return @"iPhone 4";
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone3,3"])    return @"iPhone 4";
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone4,1"])    return @"iPhone 4S";
    if ([hardware isEqualToString:@"iPhone5,1"])    return @"iPhone 5";

    …
    return nil;
}

Why not simply use dictionary literals?

- (NSString*)hardwareSimpleDescription
{
    NSString *hardware = [self hardwareString];
    if (!hardware) return nil;

    NSDictionary *hardwareToSimple = @{
                                        @"iPhone1,1": @"iPhone 2G",
                                        @"iPhone1,2": @"iPhone 3G", 
                                        @"iPhone2,1": @"iPhone 3GS",
                                        @"iPhone3,1": @"iPhone 4", 
                                        …
                                      }
    return hardwareToSimple[hardware];
}

For the record, the current list of iOS devices is:

From jc.