iOS and Android Reveal Their New Emojis for 2019 on World Emoji Day

Who would have known that today is World Emoji Day?

Well, today, July 17, is World Emoji Day, a day set aside to celebrate the new kind of communication that uses ideograms and smileys specially designed to be used in electronic messages and web pages.

The Emoji day was created by Emoji historian and founder of Emojipedia, Jeremy Burge.

Emojis are ideograms and smileys used in electronic messages and web pages. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. They are much like emoticons, but emoji are actual pictures instead of typographics

Emojis have now become so ubiquitous in our everyday life such that there is even an emoji film – The Emoji Film.

To celebrate this day, Apple and Google both shared their plans regarding new emojis to be introduced in the coming months. They stated that they are adding around 60 new emojis in all, including sloths, service dogs, different kinds of wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs.

First up, both companies are revamping their handholding couple emojis so that your emoji people can hold hands with whomever you please, regardless of gender or skin tone.

Google also notes that, as of Android Q, any Emoji that doesn’t have a gender specified in its Unicode documentation — emoji like “police officer” or “person getting haircut” and 51 others — will now default to a “gender ambiguous design.” You’ll be able to press-and-hold an emoji to select a “male” or “female” presentation, if you’d prefer.

Both platforms will also be getting a ton of new accessibility-focused emoji. Apple proposed these early last year, with the Unicode Consortium (the group that determines the official emoji set) giving its stamp of approval in February of this year.

There’s a service dog:

People using two different kinds of wheelchairs:

A prosthetic arm and prosthetic leg:

Ear with hearing aid, and the ASL sign for “deaf”:

And a person with a white cane:

There’s also a ton of other new stuff being added in, from animals to axes. There are sloths:

And flamingos:

And orangutans, otters and skunks:

There’s a bunch of new clothing, including saris, swim shorts and safety vests:

And, finally,  the yawning smiley.

Apple says the new emoji will hit iOS “this fall,” while Google says they’ll arrive with the release of Android Q later this year. If you want to see the full list of things coming in 2019, you can find it over on Emojipedia.