Are Samsung phones still region locked?

look at the box before you buy. the region lock Samsung did was mostly on European-market phones, and those boxes carried a sticker saying the sim had to be activated in that region. it wasn't permanent either, once you'd done about five minutes of calls on a local sim it went away. the bigger catch with imports is usually the network bands and the warranty. check the model number supports your carrier's bands, and expect Samsung to point you back to the country it came from for repairs.