The tech gods have smiled upon us in the form of some much-needed new emojis, including a hedgehog, a Chinese food takeout container, a mermaid, and several gender-neutral faces.
The 56 new characters will come to iOS as part of the11. 1 update, which will be pushed out next week, though it’s unknown exactly when. Brace yourselves and your iPhones.
Other emojis coming soon to a device near you includea giraffe, a zebra, a blue dinosaur, a pretty gross-looking cricket, a bunch of winter gear (mittens, a scarf, and a surprisingly chic trench), an orange heart (which somehow didn’t exist already), a vampire, a Tinkerbell-esquefairy, a girl with a towel on her head, a person climbing, a sled, and a “shh” face.
While people running Android Oreo have apparently had access to these characters for some time, most people with Android phones don’t run Oreo, but according to The Verge, developers are now able to integrate new emoji sets on older Android operating systems.
Regardless of exactly when and how it happens, we’re just looking forward to being able to confuse our friends with a wizard-Chinese food-hedgehog emoji sequence. Yeah, good luck figuring out what that means.
