This morning Google revealed that they'd brought back their Blob Emoji set - but not as emoji proper. Instead, "blobs" or Android emoji will return as part of several Android apps, as stickers. They may as well, right? They've already got the animations in their pocket, might as well toss em back out at the public once more.
It's World Emoji Day, and Apple is marking the occasion by swapping its executive team for a Memoji line-up. Gone are the usual faces for Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, and Angela Ahrendts, with Apple's custom animated emoji faces slapped over the top.
If you're an iOS user who happens to love emoji, here's the best news you'll hear all day: in celebration of World Emoji Day, Apple has announced more than 70 new emoji for iOS. They won't be here until later this year, but we're getting an early glimpse at some them today. Most of these new emoji center around different hair styles and colors, giving users a variety of new options.
Given the box office success of the Incredibles 2, you’d think Samsung and new partner Disney would promote it to no end. You might, however, be a bit late to the news because that already happened late last month when The Incredibles, including the beloved Jack-Jack, were transported to Galaxy S9 and S9+ smartphones and transformed into AR Emojis. This time, Samsung and Disney are going old school and are adding classic characters instead.
Google is all about diversity and inclusiveness, the company says, and it has gone to lengths big and small to prove it. Speaking of the latter of the two, the company recently highlighted one of those smaller changes in a tweet: it has updated its salad emoji to remove the egg, making it more inclusive for vegans. As you'd expect, some people are pretty grumpy about this.
The iPhone X has a lot of things going for it, but one of the coolest features has to be Animoji. While the announcement of Animoji may have left some scratching their heads, they've turned out to be a fun little way to add some creativity (and cuteness) to iMessage. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that Apple took the time to announce some Animoji improvements and additions at today's WWDC keynote.
If you're perpetually frustrated that you can't invite your friends for a bagel with the appropriate emoji, salvation is at hand. The release of Unicode 11.0 - which includes not only the circular bread but a lobster, parrot, and numerous other graphics, for a total of 62 new emojis - has been dated, and there's not long to wait.
After years and years of waiting, The Incredibles 2 is very nearly here. The Incredibles is widely considered to be one of the best Pixar movies ever created, so you can bet fans are looking forward to this follow up. We still have a few weeks to wait for The Incredibles 2 to premiere, but in the meantime, you can keep the hype train going with a set of new AR emoji for the Galaxy S9 and S9+.
After bringing Where’s Waldo to Google Maps last month, Google is back with another fun time waster, this time based on AI and emoji. It's a scavenger hunt that can be played on any phone, and it uses machine learning to identify real world objects and match them with an emoji. To play, just head over to emojiscavengerhunt.withgoogle.com using a phone's browser to play.
Today Google bent the knee to the Emoji overlords, changing their people-killing-pistol into a lovely classic water gun. In the past, Google was seen as a bastion of gun-related freedom, keeping their 6-shooter at their side while the WEAK companies - only Apple, that is /s - went from gun to water gun. But let's not get too excited about how the world runs its typed-images databanks, shall we?
Whether you use them often or almost never, there's no doubt that adding emoji to text is so much easier on a phone. It's simple tap a button on the virtual keyboard, scroll to the one you want, and tap it to enter, and sometimes you can just type the word associated with the emoji and a single tap with convert it. Things just aren't that elegant on the desktop, where it can be more cumbersome to find and enter that specific emoji.
Apple submitted a new set of accessibility emojis to the Unicode Consortium earlier today. There's a robot arm, a hearing aid, a service dog, and a few other excellent suggestions in the mix. If the guide dog doesn't make you say "OH MY GOSH PUPPY CUTE," the prosthetic limbs just might.