Last Monday I bought a Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime Plus in Extra Store here in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I plan to give it to my niece as a gift, it costs cheap for only 399 Saudi Riyals. When I arrived at home, I was planning to tuck it on my cabinet when I see the sticker: “Middle East and North Africam SIM Card Only”.
So I checked on Google and found out a simple trick: Use a local sim and call the destination country where you will bring the mobile phone, for five (5) minutes. In this case, local sim used is STC (Saudi) and destination country called was SMART (Philippines).
I called a friend in the Philippines and just to be sure I called her a total 7 minutes. Afterwards, i turned off the mobile phone and inserted my roaming sim. Viola, unlocked for free!
I hope this helps, especially for expatriates that want to bring mobile phones in their home country. Mind you, this trick also works for other countries like Bangladesh (my co-worker bought Samsung J7 Prime and called Bangladesh prior his vacation), India, Pakistan or practically anywhere.