Emojis became very popular with instant messaging services, and now that everything is becoming mobile, these small illustrations are used even more often. They can be fun to use, but also, they are sometimes necessary while writing certain phrases to give them a particular meaning or intention. There are many emojis available to represent certain emotions, activities, food, gadgets and some other situations. More emojis have been added over time to represent more diversity including additional skin tones and regional food. Recently, Apple added new emojis to their mobile platform, iOS 9, and Hiroshi Lockheimer mentioned back in October that Android was getting some new ones as well. Nexus devices will get the new emojis starting next week, and here’s a preview of how they will look like.
Android emojis look a little different from the ones from Apple or other apps like Whatsapp, as they are designed to look flat with no color gradients, following the design language guidelines of the OS. The new emojis have been approved by the Unicode 7.0 and Unicode 8.0 standards, both of which are supported by Android Marshmallow. Besides the unicorn, lion and crab that were teased by Lockheimer, there are some new smileys, more animals, food like a hot dog, a taco and a burrito, some religious elements and new sport ones. There were some Android emojis found on the Hangouts code back in 2014, but they haven’t been approved in Android just yet, those are based in Unicode 7.0 and they seem targeted towards travelling situations. More recently, some more were found in the same app, including a Vulcan salute, sunglasses, a medal, a detective, a spider, a peace symbol and an alembic, plus the “Man in Business Suit Levitating” and the “Reversed Hand With Middle Finger Extended”. This doesn’t mean that these emojis are the only ones that will be available, so we will have to wait for the complete list when they get released.
It was made clear that the new emojis won’t be included in a Google Keyboard update, instead those will be included in a small update for the operating system, perhaps one of the monthly updates with bug fixes and security patches. Some apps include their own emojis and some manufacturers customize them, so users might already have some of the new ones.
