Android is getting new emoji, in an update set to first roll out next week to Nexus phones. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s SVP of Android and Chrome OS, announced the news on Twitter; the emoji will come as part of an updated system image that also brings a new keyboard and font.
Android update will bring new emoji to Nexus phones next week
The emoji shown off include a lion, a crab, and a unicorn, suggesting that the Android update will support the characters in Unicode 8.0; that’s the Unicode expansion that featured the important addition of a taco. iOS gained taco support in October with iOS 9.1, making Android’s tacoless existence all the more difficult to swallow. Unicode 8.0 also brought emoji with diverse skin tones, though Apple released those separately ahead of the taco update — it remains to be seen how Google will handle the rollout.
Look! New emoji coming to #Nexus next week. Fonts and tech details shared with OEMs to include in their updates too. pic.twitter.com/GwvKw2d67p
— Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer) December 3, 2015 Although the update will hit Nexus phones first, Lockheimer says that Google has passed the relevant information on to third-party OEMs, so with any luck we’ll see tacos and diversity across the broader Android ecosystem sooner rather than later.
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