Fifty-nine new emoji with a large number of additional variations are coming soon…
Here, scattered across your screen, are Emoji that you will be living with starting with the release of iOS 13, in the Fall. Featuring diversity and fun new additions for already well populated categories, including animals, activities, food and, of course, smiley faces. When it comes to emoji, as the saying goes, more is better and better is just fine.
In an update that smiles on progressive ideas and openness, the “Holding Hands” emoji now sports any combination of gender, skin tone and even personalities, allowing the creation of up to 75 variations on the relationship and couples theme.
Based on a push from Apple, to add more emoji depicting disability themed icons, an ear adorning a hearing aid, a robotic, bionic-looking prosthetic arm and leg, wheelchairs, and a new guide dog will all be part of the new collection. Apple is dedicated to celebrating all forms of diversity and will take these steps to fill gaps in the current set of available emoji. Also exciting are the new animals: a flamingo, a sloth, a skunk and, likely to be a fan favorite, an orangutan.
“Many additional emoji categories are getting exciting updates with a new smiley face for yawning, a one-piece swimsuit, new food items including a waffle, falafel, butter and garlic, and new animals like the sloth, flamingo, orangutan and skunk.”
– APPLE PRESS RELEASE
In total, fifty-nine newly designed emoji will be included, after a free software update, on the iPad, iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch. These will be added to the thousands of emoji already available . These new designs are based on the approved characters in Unicode 12.0.