Despite the fact that the Unicode Consortium approved a whole new slew of emojis in June of 2014 and 2015, Apple has certainly taken its sweet time in actually bringing them to the public. While they were righteously quick to release emoji people that represented different skin tones (finally, am I right?), they’ve been keeping us on our toes when it comes to the rest of the new emoji canon. But now, all bets are off, and texting will never be the same.
We’re a visual generation, one that prefers disappearing Snapchats to lengthy emails, so the constant expansion of the emoji library will certainly come as a welcome improvement when iOS 9.1 is finally launched later this year. Unfortunately, iOS 9, which will become available on September 16, will not include the expansive emoji database.
Of course, if the middle finger emoji doesn’t sound like the best thing since sliced bread to you, fret not — the Unicode Consortium most likely has something for you, too. There’s the new flag designs for countries like Christmas Island, Antarctica, and Vatican City, more religious icons like a mosque and synagogue, and of course, more food items, because there can never be enough of those.
While the continued diversification of emoticons will make communicating easier and more direct, Chris Plante of The Verge brings up a good point — whereas people previously had to get creative to write emoji stories, combining disparate images to create a cohesive narrative, this is almost making things too easy.
But hey, the whole point of texting is to be as efficient as possible, right? So here’s to aiding in the completion of that goal.
