[Galaxy Note 3 General] midnite_blue:
smartphone or smartbomb?

This is an important thread, helping a number of people sort out whether or not they want to buy a Note 3 and, if so, where... and helping all of us better understand at least part of what Samsung hasn't explained about region locking. Thanks, hayat55, for starting this and for your fair-handed inclusion of all reports.

By the time of erlandobs' & dr.m0x's 11-Oct posts about Indonesia & New Zealand, it was no longer necessary to update the list of countries in the original post. By then it was clear that answering the question -- 'which countries have no Note 3 region lock?' -- wasn't going to be as cut-and-dried as it might at first have seemed.

The answer to this thread's question is complex, fluid & empirical... and leads to subjective factors which have been discussed elsewhere... like whether or not the features of the N3 are worth the risk of its failing overseas, whether or not there's anything illegal or otherwise offensive about the idea of a region lock, whether or not buying the phone somehow condones what Samsung's doing, and, if one were to buy this phone region-locked, what the methods and costs are that are associated with reliably unlocking it and keeping it that way.

Some have reported here that the Note 3's in this or that country aren't locked because there wasn't a sticker on the box their phone came in... or because they received some kind of assurance from the retailer. Others have tried out-of-region sims to see if they worked. Still others examined their N3's CSC to determine if a blacklist was there. Though this last pair of methods was more technically detailed than the first pair in determining the region-lock status of a particular phone, science has again shown its famous limitation here: the more we learn, the more we may need to restate the original question.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Which countries have no note 3 region lock

?

The answer to this is complex... because identifying a few unlocked phones in a country doesn't mean all the phones that Samsung's shipping there are unlocked.

The opposite's also true. In countries that are supposed to have stickers on their Note 3's (because they're in one of the 3 'sticker regions' Samsung created as targets for their region-locked phones) there are phones being sold there that aren't region locked.

The reason for this variability is threefold:

#1 Phones that are sim-locked to a specific network provider are not also region-locked. (See this post by dxzh.)

#2 Some Note 3's designated for sale in ''Europe'' have neither type of lock (see this post by dxzh); IDK if this is also true for ''the Middle East'' & ''the Americas.''

#3 Some retailers selling Note 3's in a country (for example, Saudi Arabia) that's in one of these 3 'sticker regions' may be sourcing their phones elsewhere. (For an example, see this post by avenging.)

Here's an example of #1. The poster you, Ranjithpr, referenced was Janis who reported that the T-Mobile-locked Note 3 she bought in Minneapolis wasn't region-locked. She was careful not to generalize her experience to the rest of the U.S. and not even to the rest of Minnesota. She didn't generalize at all but merely reported her experience... and she didn't assume her discovery that her Note 3 wasn't region-locked meant someone else in Minneapolis wouldn't discover that they've purchased a Note 3 that is region-locked. It makes sense that she would refrain from all that... it's not possible to generalize about region locking too far beyond the Galaxy phone you hold in your hand.

That said, your chances of getting a region-unlocked phone are increased if you source from one of the countries in the list I put up in post #102. That's a list of all the countries that don't appear on any of the 3 region-lock stickers. Your chances will climb higher still if you buy a provider-locked phone, since AFAIK up to now there've been no reports of a phone having both types of lock. (And there are legitimate ways of unlocking the provider lock in provider-locked phones.)

While the OP couldn't have been expected to know at the time he started this thread, there's another, perhaps more useful way of approaching this: invite anyone who bought a region-lock-free N3 a) to post the specifics of their phone's CSC (confirming the build name & the presence or absence of any region-lock or provider-lock NetworkLock fields), as dxzh suggested in post #53 and b) to post the specifics of exactly where the phone came from.

Though even this information hasn't allowed us to generalize from a few N3's to all the N3's in a country, we can learn a lot this way about what the heck is going on, as we have from those who've reported this information here.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Which countries have no note 3 region lock

?

Any answer to this question must be fluid because any firmware update has the potential of turning a region-unlocked phone into a region-locked phone. Likewise, newly manufactured Note 3's released with the newest firmware could contain any number of new surprises.

For that matter -- given the mysteries of the registration-uplink process conjectured to be involved in the official unlocking protocol -- Samsung may not be limiting themselves to firmware updates when they use the airwaves to tinker with our phones.

And, of course, anytime they wanted to, Samsung could a) add countries to one or more of their blacklists, b) add countries to one or more of their 3 target regions or even c) create a new, 4th region... for example ''Southeast Asia.'' Does anyone think they'd tell us about it beforehand if they did?

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Which countries have no note 3 region lock

?

I call the answer to this empirical because you really can't be sure your phone's unlocked until you travel and give a local sim a spin. Even after successfully experimenting with an out-of-region sim prior to your travels, you're still dealing in probabilities as there's no guarantee your phone will work with that sim when you arrive.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

To the best of my knowledge, that phone operates with the following frequencies: 850, 900, 1800, 1900; 3G = 850, 900, 1900 & 2100. AFAIK, India has 5 network providers that use 900 and 3 that use both 900 & 1800.

It'd make sense to confirm the relevant frequencies with your network provider and the supplier of your phone, but yes, it should work... if by 'unlocked' you mean without either type of lock.