How to identify the iOS version from the Hello screen?

I would like to identify the iOS version of my iPhone 6 from the Hello screen. Is there a way to tell the iOS version from the design of the Hello screen or from the MEID, IMEI or ICCID?

Solution 1:

Over the years since iOS was released, the opening Hello wallpaper which greets a user ready to set up the device has changed in several ways, most of them cosmetic. If each released major version had a subtle change to the Hello wallpaper, it would be easy to figure out which version of iOS was installed, but alas, the changes were few and far between.

Using Apple Configurator 2 you can see the installed iOS without going through any of the the setup steps:

Solution 2:

The checkra1n tool can identify the iOS version of the phone plugged into the USB port of the computer. It normally serves to jailbreak an iPhone in the Activation Lock for iPhones with iOS 12.3 through 13.4.1, but it can also display the version of iOS of the phone plugged in. It identified mine as 8.4.1. And this tool works both under Linux and macOS.

EDIT: By the way, by using the Activation Bypass DNS browsing method, you can also check the version. I'm not going into details here about it, here is a Youtube tutorial describing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jft96zWmpso