The long-awaited update to Apple’s iOS operating system is scheduled to be released in the coming months and promises to bring a variety of new emojisfurther enriching users’ communication experience.
Such an update will be in addition to the iOS 17.3recently released, which focused on security fixes to resolve more than a dozen identified issues.
The preview of the new emojis was released by Emojipedia on January 25th of this year.
Being part of the Unicode Consortium, Emojipedia, responsible for standardizing emojis, gave the green light for the launch of these new ones. The update became known as ‘Emoji 15.1’.
Keith Broni, editor-in-chief of Emojipedia, says:
“The new emojis in today’s beta are based on the September 2023 Unicode recommendations – Emoji 15.1”
Based on the timeline of iOS betas, it is likely that the final public version of iOS 17.4 will be available to users between March and April 2024.
Although the preliminary list of new emojis was approved in September, Emojipedia now offers a first look at the Apple designs that will be present on iOS.
See what the new emojis would be
First of all, it is important to highlight that other companies also apply stylized versions of the new emojis in their own operating systems, including Samsung and Google, in addition to Apple.
Apple’s emoji designs show that the four gender-neutral families are represented by silhouettes, including combinations of parents and children.
Since 2019, Apple has been offering iPhone users non-binary versions of almost all human emojis, ranging from sea creatures to chefs.
Of the 118 new emojis, the majority consist of directions-specifying versions of six existing people emojis across a variety of genders and skin tones.
The six emojis of existing people include representations such as people walking sideways, person kneeling, person with cane, person in motorized wheelchair, person in manual wheelchair, and person running.
Looking ahead, the next wave of emojis will likely be revealed in the summer and approved in September, before launching in 2025; see the images:
Preview of the new iOS emojis – Image: Emojipedia/Reproduction
Preview of the new iOS emojis – Image: Emojipedia/Reproduction
To be considered as a new emojitemplates must have multiple uses, in addition to being innovative, distinctive, compatible and frequently used, as established by the Unicode Consortium.
