Exciting times are here again for Apple faithfuls as the company on Tuesday released hundreds of new emojis with its iOS 11.1 update available on iPhone and iPad. The latest additions include emojis such as gender neutral options, new clothing options like a trench coat and a woman in a headscarf , more food items, smiley faces, and fun mystical creatures such as vampires and genies.
The emoji set also includes new flags for England, Scotland and Wales – which may be a hit with sports fans.
The latest iOS 11.1 update comes with a lot of bug fixes and security updates. In particular, it fixes the KRACK vulnerability
Earlier in October, Apple previewed more than twenty four new emojis, including more expressive smiley faces, mythical creatures and clothing. The emoji announced on World Emoji Day earlier this year, such as a breastfeeding mom, will also be included in this update.
With the approval of the Unicode Consortium (a group that sets the global standard for emoji) companies, like Apple and Google create their own emoji . This is why emoji look different on iPhones and Android devices.
Lately, there has been debate over different emoji — like burgers — on social media.
Google’s version of the burger emoji on Android shows the cheese under the burger and above the bun. Over the weekend, a debate went viral over the proper placement of toppings on a patty.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, even weighed in on Twitter, saying he would “drop everything” to address the discussion, clarifying “if folks can agree on the correct way to do this!” No action has been taken so far.
Android also recently redesigned its emoji after criticism that they looked like blobs. It added new options like an orange heart, T-Rex and vomiting face.
Apple’s new emoji set will also include animals such as hedgehogs, giraffes, crickets and dinosaurs. Also, foodies will love the new food emojis, which include apple pie, dumplings, broccoli and a takeout box.
Together, the 56 new emoji bring the total number available to 239.
The new Apple emoji’s follow Unicode Consortium’s release of version 10.0.0 late in June of this year, which included everything from fairies and a pretzel to a woman in a steamy shower.
Emojipedia released details on the new emoji, along with a sample image showing visual representations of the additions.
An announcement on Unicode states: ‘Unicode 10.0 adds 8,518 characters, for a total of 136,690 characters.
These additions include four new scripts, for a total of 139 scripts, as well as 56 new emoji characters.’
Various facial expressions were added, including star-struck, face with raised eyebrow, shushing face and a face with hand over mouth.
Apple has followed suit with many of these new additions.
In another development WhatsApp is also getting its own emoji’s for its chat app.
The Facebook-owned company unveiled its own symbols that look similar to those used on Apple, although here are small differences between them – for example Apple’s ghost emoji has a black eye while WhatsApp’s does not.
WhastApp rolled out the emoji for Android beta version 2.17.364 on Monday.
