Mermaids, elves and 67 other emojis coming soon to your iPhone

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These should be coming to iOS 11 later this year.
These should be coming to iOS 11 later this year.
Photo: Emojipedia

Unicode 10 is right around the corner, and it’s going to bring a whole bunch of awesome new emojis that will eventually make their way to iOS.

Some of the best include a t-rex, a hedgehog, a grinning face with stars for eyes, and a mermaid and merman. There are 69 altogether, many of which are available in different styles. Here’s a look at some of them.

Unicode 10 was first confirmed last November, but it’s still in draft for now, so we don’t know for sure how many of these emojis will be included when it launches in June.

But these mockups from Emojipedia, styled to look like Apple’s own emoji designs, give us a glimpse at some of the characters that could make the cut. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to see all of these approved and baked into iOS. I don’t think you can have too many emojis.

Emoji Unicode 10
Just some of the contenders for Unicode 10.
Photo: Emojipedia

Other potential additions that don’t appear here include flags for England, Scotland, and Wales; a man and woman sitting in the lotus position; a man and woman rock climbing; a zombie; male and female genies, and many more.

It’s unlikely these characters will be baked into iOS 11 since Unicode 10 won’t be finalized until this summer, and Apple will need to design each one from scratch to meet its own guidelines. Like Unicode 9.0, support should be added with iOS 11.1 or 11.2 later in the year.

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