If you’ve got an iPhone, iPad or other Apple device, you’re going to be getting a good few more emoji to use later in the year, and to coincide with Emoji Day, Apple has just unveiled the first batch.

As published on the Emojipedia blog, 13 emoji coming to Apple devices have been unveiled. They include a dodo, a boomerang, a human heart, lungs, bubble tea, and the transgender symbol.

That’s a fair mix of different things, so it’s a good showing for the company, but it’s not the whole list coming later in the year by any means. In fact, when iOS 14 rolls out (or whenever the next emoji set gets released for Apple devices), it will include no less than 117.

More emoji

The world of emoji is a strangely bureaucratic one. In January, the new emoji for 2020 were unveiled by the Unicode Consortium, which dictates the emoji released each year. The next stage is for companies like Apple, Google and Facebook to design their own versions of the ‘base’ emoji, which they use on their own platforms.

You may have expected more face mask-clad or socially distant emoji, but these latest designs were approved in January, before the world felt the full force of Covid-19, so perhaps in 2021 there will be more pandemic-themed emoji.

The 13 emoji unveiled by Apple were among the 117 shown off in January (well, 65 if you don’t count different skin tone versions of the same emoji), so the company still has plenty left to show off later in the year.

When Apple shows off its full list of emoji – and when Facebook and Google come up with their alternatives – we’ll let you know.

Source: techradar.com