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Comment by jampa | Hacker News Reader

I know this is a non-issue for many, but those emojis look really dated. Every update they get harder and harder to read in small form. One of the things I observe, mainly on Instagram Stories is only people with iOS post with emojis attached, I never see Android ones. Too bad there is no way to install custom emojis in any system (without rooting/registry tweaking), like we do with fonts.

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Personally, I find it kind of ridiculous that new emojis are considered flagship features of mobile OS updates. I'd think that it would be possible to decouple emoji updates from kernel/security updates, so I imagine that Android/iOS tie them to the OS updates solely as a way to motivate non-technical users to update.

Mobile OS's aren't just for grumpy old people.

I'm younger than emojis themselves, to be perfectly honest, but I hardly think that an (incorrect) ad hominem makes my point any less valid.

Emojis have no relevance to how technical someone is

Exactly, they have appeal to people independent of technical skill; hence my hypothesis that they make sure to emphasize the things that are more likely to resonate with larger groups of people (like emoji) rather than things like Project Treble or a "native C/C++ API for high-performance audio", even if the former really have little to due with the OS itself.

If we're going down that route, it's also worth noting that "old people" such as GP referred to also can like emoji; my parents and grandparents enjoy using emoji.

GP's point wasn't that emojis shouldn't be updated, but that it shouldn't require MAJOR/BREAKING VERSION updates (kernel, libraries, the works) to simply update a sprite font.

Who is saying it does? They are just releasing them at the same time.

I don't think they're retroactively releasing them for versions of Android prior to Oreo, though, are they?

Android actually recently released a support library that apps can implement for this.

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

I suspect it's probably just that "by the time we realised this would be important it was too hard to change it" rather than anything sinister. Though I wish they would pull them out so I can swap or update them externally to software.

"All current iOS emoji will now work on my phone" was genuinely a highlight of the Nougat update for my Galaxy S7 .

The yellow blobs were adorable, and sidestepped all the identity politics guff associated with the more anthropomorphised styles.

I like them too. Was disappointed to see the latest ones.

I absolutely hate those emoji. It's the gradient and outlines, it looks like bad enterprise design. The flat blobs were great.

Yep, new emojis look absolutely awful. They are so out of touch with what their customers want. It's like the emojis were made by some robot or algorithm that is trying to optimize the wrong parameters. I mean, just look at this comparison: http://i.imgur.com/apqo9Ry.png

They're not out of touch with what their customers want. Many of them didn't like them because of the whole "Android is cheap" dilemma (which is BS). The users asked and they got. The people who did like them are a very small, specific, yet vocal group of people.

Where do you take that from? To me, the new ones look way "cheaper", like ripped off WordArt.

They look more like the iOS ones. That's what's important (even though I think the overuse of gradients makes iOS emoji look dated too).

Oddly Facebook Messenger seems to have the best set [1], for my eyes.

[1] https://emojipedia.org/messenger/

No they don't. They look like a shitty replica of them made by someone who understands nothing about art. Just because they both have "gradients" means nothing. iOS has smooth 3D gradients. These have a plain and awful looking linear gradient from top to bottom with two colors. The messenger one you linked has so much detail and personality. These ones have neither. They are, as mentioned above, like cheap Clipart. If you honestly can't see the difference between the one you linked and these new Android ones, then I don't know what to tell you.

I suspect the reason for the update was to bring the Android emoji more in line with Apple's, which are generally considered the standard emoji.

The look like phpBB or IPB smileys with gradients.

I used to hate the blobmojis, but after a while I started to grow fond of them. The weird gradients on the new emojis are a bit jarring. In my opinion the clean, flat style of the old emojis is a lot nicer.

I don't think they're jarring at all. They feel familiar, very reminiscent of early 2000s AIM emoticons.

The new emojois are in the top 50 of all time posts in /r/crappydesign https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/6elhjc/the_ne...

From kawaii to krappy

looks like bad 00s clipart

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