There will be more than 100 new emojis debuting this fall along with the iOS 14.2 release. The emoji characters will include the beaver, anatomical heart, transgender flag and the boba—which is an emoji I didn’t know I needed.
The announcement for the new emojis were supposed to be released along with the release of iOS 14. However, due to COVID-19 there was a 6-month delay for emoji 14.0. The organisation that’s responsible for the innovative emoji characters—The Consortium—explained that volunteers play a big part in the release of new emojis.
“Under the current circumstances we’ve heard that our contributors have a lot on their plates at the moment and decided it was in the best interests of our volunteers and the organisations that depend on the standard to push out our release date,” said Mark Davis, President of The Consortium.
Now, Apple has said that the new emoji will be available for iOS, macOS and watchOS this fall. The update also features new gender-inclusive options and skin tone variations.
Other confirmed emoji additions include boomerang, dodo, piñata, nesting dolls, coin, lungs, ninja, and tamale. There have also been calls for more variations of mask-wearing emojis to match the pandemic, so hopefully we’ll get them as there will be more than 100 additions.
As my colleage Marcus pointed out, we will soon see heaps of Instagram stories using the boba emoji in their captions. That includes me. I will do that.