The region is locked and cannot be changed. Customers are not informed of this, and the packaging does not indicate this. Essentially, you would have to predict that there will be a regional problem before you purchase the watch in order to ask at time of purchase. It is clearly very unlikely that customers would do that.
It's pretty shocking that these devises are being sold with insufficient information, which is actually a criminal offence in the UK (misleading omissions, regulation 6 of the Unfair Trading Regulations 2008: insufficient information about a product that customers need to make an imformed choice if this would cause the customer to make a transactional decision they would not have taken otherwise).
I was unfortunately mis-sold by Samsung in china and have had no luck in getting my money back, but clearly this practice is commonplace in Samsung outlets globally. Each region of Samsung is also technically a separate company, so you can only log complaints with the Samsung company you purchased from (for me, Samsung China).
I hope this information will help someone who's been caught out by SamsungUK.
