Just yesterday we reported on how the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 would be region locked to the region you bought it in. Basically what this means is that if you bought the device in Europe, you would not be able to use a SIM card from the Americas or Asia Pacific region with it, making it highly inconvenient for users who travel frequently. According to All About Samsung, they claim to have received an official statement from Samsung about the issue, and based on what Samsung has to say, it looks like this could be a software issue as opposed to a hardware one.
The solution suggested by Samsung, “If purchased in the European Union and not yet been put into use to be activated for the first time abroad, users can unlock their device for the region free from local Samsung service partners.” So this is good news for grey imports, but not so good for users who roam and need to purchase a local SIM card in a particular region as it is generally cheaper to do so than pay roaming charges. Like we said this appears to be a software-related issue, so hopefully in the near future Android hackers will be able to cook up a solution to this problem. In the meantime if you were thinking of picking up the Galaxy Note 3, this is something to think about.
Filed in . Read more about Galaxy Note 3 and Samsung.