Many Kenyans have a Safaricom SIM card for M-PESA services and an Airtel, Telkom or Faiba SIM card for affordable data and calling services. However, the latter three telcos can be frustrating if you often travel around the country. Some areas are not well connected to the grid, so you may experience dotted connectivity when deep inside some territories.
Usually, in such cases, the only way out is to default back to Safaricom for data and calling services, which requires fiddling around with your phone’s settings to get you going. But this process may soon become shorter, quicker and more straightforward.
Currently, you have to go to your phone’s Settings > Network & Internet > SIMs in order to to switch to the SIM card you want to use for data services. But in a future Android update, Google may add a Quick Settings tile to change the current SIM used for data.
Google has recently marked a request for this feature submitted last December as “fixed” and even added that it’ll be available “in a future build.” However, there’s no mention of when exactly this feature will be available.
Android 14 has just arrived on Google Pixels and is still being tested on Samsung, Xiaomi and other devices. But since the feature isn’t available in the latest stable build, it’ll probably be part of an incremental upgrade in the future.
Most smartphones sold in Kenya have two SIM card slots, so having a Quick Settings tile or toggle to easily switch the SIM card being used for data connectivity should come in handy for most people.
