A bobbing head, a pair of high-five hands and an afro comb are all set to make their way to smartphones next year when the draft list for Emoji 15.0 is revealed.
Three new shades of heart have been introduced – light blue, pink and gray – as well as several animals, including a donkey and a goose, vegetables in the form of peas and ginger, and cultural artifacts such as maracas and a wooden flute.
Two new icons have also been introduced: a pink Khanda, which represents Sikhism along with the other major world religions, and a blue wifi logo.
The Unicode Consortium, an industry body that deals with text rendering standards, is responsible for approving new emoji designs before individual smartphone manufacturers choose how to display them. For eight years, the online resource Emojipedia has provided “sample images” illustrating new emoji in the style of Apple’s iOS emoji set to help you visualize what the designs will look like in next year’s updates.
This year’s cohort of new emoticons is the smallest yet, and there are no person-syle entries. Photo: Emojipedia
“Furthermore, since this is only a draft emoji list, each emoji is subject to change before final approval in September 2022,” said Keith Bronney, editor-in-chief of Emojipedia. “However, it’s worth noting that the majority of emoji draft candidates have been shortlisted in the last few years.”
The pink heart is a particularly coveted new emoji, Broni added, and has been one of the most popular emoji requests since the company started tracking them in 2016. But other than that, there’s little choice for emoji fans: The Emoji 15.0 update is the smallest yet, with only 31 new characters introduced. More than 100 were introduced in Emoji 14.0 last year. And for the first time, there aren’t any new human-style emojis among the new additions.
The list of projects should be finalized in September, after which device makers will be able to start their own deployments. For iOS, this usually comes in January each year, while Android phones vary by manufacturer.
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