LG G3 is one of those smartphones which gained a reputed popularity worldwide and gave pretty good competition to other flagship devices from the likes of HTC and Samsung, as people from all over the world and different regions have got their hands on this beast. An independent dev over at XDA, YaDr, has successfully discovered a way to change the region settings on LG G3. Although, the developer’s work is still a work in progress, but we can still mange to get through it easily.

If you have ever wanted to get T9 for a different language in your phone’s dialer than changing the region on your phone is the way to get it. And in case you don’t know, T9 is a predictive text, it stands for text on 9 keys. It is a USA-patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, originally developed by Tegic Communications, now part of Nuance Communications. So, coming back to the point of the discovery, this method allows us to change the region to whatever you like it to. Of course, you’ll get the cherries, if you get it right. The features of the region are your cherries, and they are as follows:

  • Customised T9 in dialer (Russian/Greek/etc).
  • Customised voice assistant.
  • Native LTE/WCDMA/GSM network mode.

Now, let’s jump into the technical details. Well, it’s LG’s “Region auto detection” feature that helps your phone to know in what region for phone is being used at. Respect to “carrier/country”. Which means, if an Indian user like me, buys a LG G3, with Vodafone as network carrier, the combo will look like Vodafone/India. The detection uses combination of operator code and country code (1 byte, numbering convention unknown. In LG’s documents it’s referred to as “BUYER”). And, according to YaDr,

this partition is generated when you flash kdz with lg flash tool.

Well, a .kdz file is a firmware update from LG, which can be flashed using LG Flashtool.

Now, grab a tea or coffee whatever your niche suggest and follow these small steps.

ROOT ACCESS REQUIRED

  1. Download and install a root explorer app from the Play store (we recommend the free ES File Explorer app).
  2. Find out which country your LG G3 was originally shipped for, from your phone’s Settings » About Phone » Software.
  3. Find out your current operator code.
  4. Now using the country and operator code, find folder currently in use on your device in /cust/ folder in your system files. For that look for folder name matching your country and operator OR open the {folder}/cust.prop file and look for the following entries in respect for your country and operator:
    ro.build.target_operator
    ro.build.target_country
    ro.build.target_region
  5. Once you find the correct folder, open its /cust.prop file and replace the example entries shown above with the country and operator code for the region you want to switch to.
  6. Done. Reboot your device to apply changes.

If you’re unable to understand the steps above, then do read the original post on XDA by YaDr for more detailed explanation of the tricky things all tricky things we discussed above to change region on LG G3.