Friday is World Emoji Day, and the celebration wouldn’t be complete without Apple unveiling the new additions coming to iPhone, iPad and Mac. Highlights of the iOS 14 emoji include ninjas, the transgender symbol, and a certain Italian hand gesture.
But the complicated process emoji have to get through before reaching our phones means there aren’t any timely ones, like more people wearing masks.
Check out some of the new iOS 14 emoji
Apple gave Emojipedia a sneak peek at a few of the emoji that will debut this fall in iOS 14, iPadOS 14 and macOS Big Sur.
One that is drawing attention is “pinched fingers.” That’s a gesture Italian make regularly, but seemingly mystifies almost everyone else. Adriano Farano, one of the people who proposed this emoji, says it means “What do you want?”
In addition to the ninja and transgender symbol named earlier, users will be able to tell friends they ate a tamale with bubble tea only using these little images. Plus, Apple also showed off emoji for a dodo bird and a beaver. There’s an anatomical heart and lungs. And Russian nesting dolls, a boomerang and a piñata.
The lifecycle of an emoji
With the urgency of wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, one would think that there’d be new emoji with face protection. There are none because getting approval for a new emoji is a years-long process. And Apple has little control over which are included.
The decision is made by the Unicode Consortium because these little images are included in messages sent from iPhones to Androids, and vice versa. Windows and macOS devices use them too. And actual images aren‘t transferred — what is sent is a unicode that the receiving device translates back into a picture.
The roster of 117 new emojis for 2020 was announced back in January. What Apple unveiled today is what its iOS 14 versions will look like.
