Hacker News Reader

Comment by fenwick67 | Hacker News Reader

"new emoji" is an OS-level feature now. Welcome to 2017.

> "new emoji" is an OS-level feature now.

System fonts have been an OS-level feature since the advent of OS with bundled GUI. Support of a larger part of the Unicode space in system fonts has been an OS-level feature since Unicode. New emoji has been a visible aspect of that, especially on mobile, for quite some time.

Why is it tied to the OS version, though? I would (naively) think it's a matter of just sending the new font as an OTA update?

Given that it's apparently a fairly compelling feature for many consumer end users, maybe it's a way of convincing OEMs and carriers and to actually deliver updates.

There's the EmojiCompat library that can be used now by apps to support the full set in previous versions of the OS: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/look-and-feel/...

So it looks like it's not a "ploy", but an actual technical reason. Baffles me.

I remember that when Apple started announcing that they were new emoji's in the new iOS versions all of a sudden people updated WAY faster instead of waiting a few months.

It really does seem to be something that drives adoption.

I'll admit it. The thing that got me to update iOS this last time were the iMessage effects (slam, confetti, invisible ink, etc.).

I rarely use those now, but I'm not immune to superficial hype. It's fun.

I love the invisible ink one the most. I use it pretty often actually. Yes it's dumb, but I'll be damned if I can't have some dumb fun.

Invisible ink is very useful. I've used it to text people minor pieces of privileged information at work when I don't know who can see their phones. After all, most people just leave their phones on table tops with notifications on. It's also great for texting with my wife when she is with her parents or traveling with co-workers.

Well, there was a lot of distaste for the previous style, it's a pretty notable difference to users. (For the record, I liked the original "blobs" and will miss them.)

I'm fairly sure anyone who has actually had a proper look at the new emojis much prefers the old ones. And I'm not talking just about the blobs (which were only a small fraction of the emojis), but rather the overall style with the gradient and border, and the drawing for the animal emojis too.

I didn't think I'd miss the blobs until I saw these new ones. The new ones are embarrassingly bad. Maybe it's just me, but I feel Koreans and Japanese do much better emojis.

And perhaps for the final time. Google has released a support library[1] to put the onus back on individual app developers to integrate support for new emoji, and it is compatible all the way back to 4.4 (Kit Kat).

[1] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/look-and-feel/...

Does that make the new emoji a non-feature for Oreo?

I hoped they wouldn't follow through with the new emoji style. Going to miss the blobs a lot.

why? those expressions were completely incompatible with what other phone users were seeing or sending

I've only ever seen them inside Google hangouts, but I will say that I thought they were kind of cute.

I don't know where they could keep them since I agree it would be a good idea to have something very similar to other oasis.

Some of them did not match perfectly with their counterparts in other Emoji sets. I wouldn't call that "completely incompatible" though, and it doesn't imply that one or the other is wrong.

If the purpose of this was to bring them in line with other emoji sets, they could have just redone the few that show somewhat different expressions.

Agreed, miscommunication was a serious problem with them. See https://www.fastcodesign.com/90125701/googles-18-month-quest...

No they weren't.

You are correct in some cases but not in a majority.

I hear ya...of the two bolded feature headings in the story we get: 1. Supersonic speed ( always welcome ) 2. League of extraordinary emojis ( the last thing I would care about in a new os release )

Oreo now has new font handling that allows apps to download new (emoji) fonts so these shouldn't be necessary anymore.

For a lot of people, new emoji are a great reason to upgrade and not miss out. Apple's been training customers to do this for years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com