Another day, another action taken by Samsung seemingly intended to earn the ire of its users. Those looking into the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 may already be familiar with the device's region lock situation. While not the very latest scandal surrounding the device, region locking a device means that when you travel to a different region, you will be forced to use your native country's SIM, rather than a cheaper local SIM card. And despite the company's claims otherwise, many angry customers testify to this indeed being the case.

However, this is XDA, where the impossible becomes possible. Accordingly, there's an app XDA Elite Recognized Developer Chainfire for that. Ok, there's an app too, but it's by Chainfire.

The device's region lock is actually a network blacklist, which includes both carriers and entire countries. Chainfire's RegionLock Away does exactly what its title suggests: It removes the region lock from the Galaxy Note 3 SM-N9005 (at least running MI7 firmware), and it is able to do this by clearing the blacklist.

It is important to keep in mind that this is not the same as obtaining a SIM unlock for your device. Further, it seems that purchasing a SIM unlock code not only unlocks the device's SIM, but also its region. In other words, if you are already planning on SIM unlocking your device, you don't need RegionLock Away. But if you have in intention of obtaining a region unlock and you are rooted, Chainfire just made your life much easier.

Make your way over to the original thread to get your fix. We hope that this Region Lock is not retroactively applied to other Samsung devices. But if it is, we'll know who to turn to.

[Thanks to Moderator Committee Member wacky.banana and Elite Recognized Developer Chainfire for the tip!]