Have you ever found yourself exhausted after a day of work and suddenly so hungry you can't work up the effort to cook a meal...or even type in a full search term? If so, Uber Eats' latest update is made for you. Going forward, users can now search for the food item they want by entering an emoji into the search field instead of words.
Smartphone users who like to communicate with emojis now have new options thanks to the release of Unicode 14.0. The latest version of Unicode Standard launched on September 14, formalizing the previous draft release. In all, there are 838 new characters in Unicode 14.
Today we're taking a peek at a bunch of newly renovated emoji delivered with Android 12. Google made a set of emoji ready for all platforms in their collection, including but not limited to apps like Gmail and YouTube, as well as operating systems like Android and Chrome OS. The first and most clear change came with the "motorway" emoji, which now no longer has yellow lines on BOTH sides of the motorway - because that does not make sense.
Facebook has rolled out a new library of emojis for its messaging app that adds a new layer of expression to the commonly-used images: sound effects. Facebook calls these Soundmoji, explaining that when selected, the recipient will not only see the emoji but also hear a related sound, including everything from clapping and chirping crickets to sound bites from TV shows.
The next wave of Emoji will launch at the turn of the month - but not before Microsoft releases Clippy. The classic living paperclip character has officially made its way to the next upgrade in Emoji in Windows products, courtesy of a Twitter dare. After suggesting that they'd make Clippy into an Emoji if a Tweet reached a certain number of likes - that happened several times over, so here comes Clippy - with a few other changes to Emoji in tow.
Those who were Microsoft Office users back in the late 90s or early aughts undoubtedly remember Clippy, the paperclip office assistant who offered tips and tricks for Office that most found annoying rather than helpful. Even though Clippy hasn't been used in any Office apps for many years at this point, the irritating little office assistant still has quite the reputation. It seems that Clippy is about to make a grand comeback too, though you don't have to worry about it greeting you every time you open a new document.
One of the biggest visual changes to Android with Android 12 appears to be in emoji. While the emoji system itself will not change, Android 12 Beta 1 alone introduced a whopping 389+ updated emoji designs! Designs are refined in several key ways, including smoothing, flattening, and a conglomerating of color pallet. If we look at the collected changes made in Android 12, the otherwise most recent set of emoji look positively mish-mashed and Web 1.0 in style.
It seemed for a time that emojis would be the new hieroglyphics that our descendants would scratch their heads at thousands of years into the future. These pictorial representations of emotions, peoples, and objects are lightweight, compared to GIFs and stickers, and are more common across platforms and devices thanks to the Unicode standard that gets updated and enlarged regularly. Unfortunately, smartphone platforms like Android aren't always able to catch up with these changes but Google might be paving the way for updating emojis outside of major Android OTA updates.
The Unicode Consortium has announced the finalized lineup of emoji for Emoji 13.1, adding a total of seven new images, as well as a huge number of skin tone variants for couples. These new emoji have been listed in the 'Emoji Recently Added v13.1' release on the Unicode website where anyone can browse the additions and their related keywords.
Today, as it happens, is World Emoji Day. While that probably doesn't mean a whole lot to most people out there, it means something to Google, which is revealing a number of new emoji that will go live with Android 11 later this year. As you might expect, the inbound emoji include a healthy mix of people, food, animals, and things. There's even a tree stump emoji!
The coronavirus pandemic has impacted a lot, from businesses to supply chains to schools. We're learning today that the outbreak will even impact the roll out of new emoji, with the Unicode Consortium announcing this week that Unicode Standard version 14 will be delayed by six months next year, moving its release from March to September 2021.
The Unicode Consortium is gearing up to release Emoji 13.0, the latest batch of emoji that'll eventually be found on smartphones, tablets and more. Emoji fans can expect a total of 62 emoji introduced in 2020, among them being some popular icons of objects like 'bubble tea,' a ladder and boomerang, as well as emoji related to people, animals, and even several insects.