With Android O emojis are getting a facelift as Google is changing things up again in the design department. While the amount of emojis have steadily been increasing over the years, the design of the emojis that were available on Android have stayed mostly the same for quite a while. Commonly referred to as “blobs” the native Android emoji hasn’t changed much since Android 4.4 KitKat, but with the Android O beta program now having been announced Google is updating the visual appearance to be more like the emojis you’ll find on other platforms, meaning they will look less like blobs and instead have a round shape, which is pretty consistent across many platforms and apps.
That said Android O emojis will still have some distinguishable characteristics that will set them apart. For example, in the first two images in the gallery below the design elements are mostly the same between the Android O and non-Android O versions, but the shape of the emoji itself has been changed. Some details will be new, such as the color of the mouth that can be seen in the emoji with the heart eyes which is shifting from an orange to a black color, but other details will remain the same. This is also going to change on a case by case basis as some emojis will change visually more than others, but all of them will have been visually touched up to some degree.
The new designs are to be a part of the emoji 5.0 standard and will be available to those already on the Android O beta, which means that anyone who opted into the Android O Beta Program that was just announced earlier this morning should end up seeing these once the new software is installed on their device. Every emoji is getting redesigned with this release which means there will be some that likely look completely different, and some emoji designs will now include elements like the use of a gradient for part of the color. There will also be new emojis introduced with this release including a giraffe, a pretzel, a dumpling, and a handful of new smileys. While these designs are likely to be final, nothing is set until Android O is released as a stable software version and until that time designs could still change.
