Yes you’ve heard it right, more than 250 new emoji characters will soon be landing to your smartphones and computers. This follows the announcement of Unicode 7.0 by the Unicode Consortium, the industry body devoted to the development and promotion of software standards.
According to the announcement post, most of the new emoji characters derive from characters in long-standing and widespread use in Wingdings and Webdings fonts, including a chipmunk and a dove; symbols for weather, such as a thermometer and a tornado; and some “miscellaneous” symbols. For example:
While the descriptions and reference designs for the new symbols are set by Unicode, the actual implementation can vary widely between device manufacturers. Don’t rush to your smartphone just yet to try out these new emoji, as it may be a while before Apple or Google update their keyboards.
Emoji themselves first gained popularity in Japan where they were introduced by mobile networks as a fun feature for users.
Here are some of the new emojis:
Probably the highlight among these new emojis is the middle finger, which can be a really good way to tell someone you are messaging that you are really angry. Of course, it’s up to smartphone makers to decide whether they will support this or any new emoji in future software updates, so don’t expect to be able to send these new emoji right away.
