Smartphone users can look forward to dozens of new emojis soon,
including "facepalm", "rolling on the floor laughing" and "selfie"
icons.
The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit group that develops and
maintains digital standards, has approved 72 new emojis for
inclusion in Unicode version 9.0.
Unicode is the standard for text, numbers and emojis across all
platforms.
In the smileys and people category, arguably the most-used emojis,
there will be 22 new additions.
Notable ones include "rolling on the floor laughing", a "nauseated
face", "facepalm", "selfie", a "shrug" and a pregnant woman.
New sports have been added, including water polo, fencing and
wrestling.
There are 13 new animals - a rhinoceros, gorilla, shark, shrimp,
butterfly and more - and 18 new "food and drink" icons, including
bacon, croissant and avocado.
There were 77 emojis shortlisted for inclusion earlier, and four of
those which did not make it were food or food-related - gyoza,
fortune cookie, a Chinese food takeout box and chopsticks.
The new emojis will join more than 1,500 existing ones.
While the emojis are scheduled for release on June 21, when they
will be rolled out to end users depends on vendors including
Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Apple may include the new emojis in its new iOS around September,
9to5mac.com predicted. A new version of Android is also due out
then.
The smartphone icons have grown in popularity as a way to
communicate in text messages, and are now firmly ensconced in
popular culture.
ST