Galaxy S7 UAE phone in UK network issue

[hifromrich]

Hi all,

A relative of mine lost his UK bought unlocked S7 and claimed on insurance for a replacement. The replacement phone that claimed to be unlocked would work on o2 and Three but would not register on the EE/BT network. The BT sim card would work fine on any other unlocked phone.

They sent the phone back as presumed faulty and a replacement arrived and had the exact same issue. I noticed both phones had an origin in settings of United Arab Emirates.

Does anyone have any ideas how a phone can be seemingly unlocked to some networks but not others, and also whether a UAE region phone would have some kind of network restriction?

Thanks

Rich 

[BandOfBrothers]

Who is supplying the phone's to you @hifromrich  ?

Directly from Samsung or from a Network  ?

If via Samsung UK then the phone should be unlocked to all network's and when a 10 minute call has been made using a local sim card to a local number the Region Lock would remove itself.

[hifromrich]

Just an update. The insurance company sent out a third phone and this one works fine. Interestingly this one doesn't have the UAE origin tag.

I can only assume the batch of phones they were sending out had some kind of lock on them.