On a recent trip to Europe (away from my home US cell area), I purchased a 30-day French (Orange) eSIM that was useable across all of Europe--that includes areas where Dutch, German, Austrian and Hungarian are the native languages. The Samsung Galaxy Store app & Member's app on my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra running Android16 (and spouse's S24 Ultra, also running Android16) switched its language from English to French, ignoring the "English" Language setting on my phone, so I couldn't read either app's info. There's no app-specific Language setting for the Samsung Store or Member's app. .. I noticed and reported this issue to Samsung, saying that they should use the user-set Language setting on the phone instead of using the eSIM's country. They responded: .. "Since you are in the European region and using a SIM card from that region, the language set on the app is the provider's language. The app uses the default system language and the SIM card language. Furthermore, there is no language setting specific to the Galaxy Store app." .. That may be what Samsung is doing now with its Galaxy Store and Member's apps, but it's OBJECTIVELY WRONG to do. I don't speak French. If I was traveling in South America I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese, and if I was traveling in China I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese. But I might purchase a local eSIM for reliable & inexpensive cellular access in those cases also. And if a French speaking/Spanish speaking/Mandarin speaking person was traveling in the USA and purchased an eSIM, he/she shouldn't have English forced on them by the Samsung apps. .. Samsung is an international company selling its phones to international users -- act like it! You should be using the phone's Language setting for the Samsung apps, *not* a SIM location! Other non-Samsung apps used the Default Language setting and continued to work correctly in my set language.
I could have reverted to my pSIM with my USA-based carrier, for a little while, roaming at a cost (very high $ roaming costs with my cheap USA MVNO plan). If it came down to a make-or-break for something I *had* to do with the Samsung apps I would have paid a few $ and done that.
But I bought a cheap travel eSIM for a reason (lots of data cheap, local-Europe phone number and texts) for a reason, and there wasn't anything vital I needed to do with those Samsung apps.
Do you have any language packs installed? The device cannot revert to those languages if they are not there or not in the list of added languages. Settings/General management/Language then see what is listed there and what is not the default. Change it to English if (e)SIM removed it from being the default (though that can still leave some aspects of the language at hand mixed with English is the languages are still present in the lists of add-ons), or simply remove them all form the phone (you may still get a prompt to download the relevant language pack though). I am not saying this is a definite fix, but it is possible that it would force the use of the preferred language. I am just throwing this out there as a solution.
Yes, lots of language packs installed. Four versions of English (including Australia, India, UK & USA, the most of any pack languages). The phone's default language was/is already set to English (USA if it was selected from a pack language).
Per my original post, Samsung already "confessed" to the issue in their support email response: "Since you are in the European region and using a SIM card from that region, the language set on the app is the provider's language. The app uses the default system language and the SIM card language."
Although they don't seem to be using the default system language for "much" -- maybe there was some (default lang) English text intermingled with the more common French. As discussed, VPN doesn't matter/fix-it because they're not using the phone's location or carrier/ISP, just the "SIM card provider's language."
The "European region" is pretty broad -- how many languages are spoken across the EU? whereas most xSIM cards from any EU country are required to be honored/roam over the entire EU. Should a user only buy an eSIM from a provider in an EU country officially using their preferred language? Fortunately this only impacted a few Samsung apps I could live without (not Samsung Translate etc.). Most apps use the phone's "default language" or, optionally, allow per-app language selection. I'm just grateful Samsung isn't applying this dumb behavior to the whole phone UI. You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it **bleep**-fool-proof...
