Google paves the way for a big emoji change in Android

Nov 24, 2020 11:55 GMT  ·  By

New emoji versions are rolled out every once in a while, and the packages published by Unicode are then implemented by Apple and Google in the next major operating system updates for their devices.

Needless to say, this means users must wait quite a long time to get their hands on the emoji, and Google is now working to address it.

XDA has come across new commits in the Android Open Source Project (ASOP) Gerrit which seems to suggest that beginning with Android 12, Google is planning a different approach for updating emojis.

In other words, major operating system updates would no longer be required to make add new smiley faces to our phones, as Google just wants to handle them separately.

What this means is that Android devices could receive new emoji much faster whenever Unicode releases new packs, though this also depends on how fast Google manages to ship this new update to smartphones running its mobile operating system.

Coming in the summer of 2021

While this may not seem like a huge change at first, it’s something that comes in truly handy, as emojis are now an essential part of the conversation we all have on our mobile devices.

Of course, we’re still far from the moment this new approach would make its way to users, as Android 12 is scheduled to go live in the summer of the next year. So if this is indeed happening, we need to wait a few more months to see the new emoji updating system going live.

What will be more interesting to watch is how Google wants to handle emoji updates on older versions of Android. Right now, it looks like the change would happen at the OS level in Android 12, so it’s not clear right now if the company will introduce the new approach into previous versions too.