14 DAY TRIAL // The Unicode Consortium rolled out version 10 of its standard earlier this week, and Microsoft and Apple are the first two tech giants adopting it for their own products.
Microsoft has already started testing the new emoji in preview builds of Windows 10, with everyone else to get it when the Fall Creators Update goes live in September this year. Apple, on the other hand, is expected to make the new smiley faces available in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, both of them coming in the fall as well.
Apple typically needs more time to add new emoji to its products, but given the fact that updated software is projected to go live in the fall, the company should have enough time to make this happen.
The new emoji
The updated Unicode standard brings several new emoji, including new clothing symbols like Christmas stockings, but also dinosaurs, an updated vomiting face, and new food like steak, pretzel, chopsticks, broccoli and a coconut. There are also new gender and skin tone modifiers, which substantially increase the final number of emoji, bringing the iOS count to nearly 240.
On Windows 10, the new emoji are part of the updated touch keyboard, and Microsoft has even implemented a search feature in the Emoji Panel to make it possible to find a specific emoji faster.
“After opening the panel via the Win + period (.) or semicolon (;) hotkeys, keep typing! The words you type will be used to filter the emoji displayed. If you close the panel by clicking “x” button or pressing Esc, the words will remain,” Microsoft explained, adding that this feature only works on the en-us keyboard.
While Microsoft users can already try out the new emoji in preview builds of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Apple customers need to wait a little bit longer, as the existing beta versions of iOS 11 do not come with support for Unicode 10 just yet.
