iPhone from China

Hey all, I hope I'm posting in the right section.

I recently went overseas to China to visit some family and was lucky enough to be gifted a new iPhone 4S (decent upgrade from my 4). When I got back here (Australia), the google search function redirects to the google.cn page and does not work. I have to manually go to the google web page in order to look something up. I did some research and apparently this is a well known problem with phones bought in China abd theres no fix. ive tried changing the region settings and everything suggested with mo avail. So I just wanted to know if this is any grounds for apple to replace my phone? I just wanted some opinions of whether or not i have a shot as the apple store is a bit of a trek from my house.

Thanks