Every year, a new assortment of emoji are agreed upon and released into the wild, letting us quickly express our thoughts and emotions.
And this year, over 200 new emoji have been announced that could help us deal with the chaos of 2020.
Things like mending a broken heart or a face with dazzled spiral eyes are among the new symbols coming to Android and iOS smartphones.
The Unicode Consortium is the international organisation responsible for creating emoji and has announced 217 extra cartoons as part of the Emoji 13.1 update.
Many of the new additions are skin tone variations for existing emoji, there are also several newcomers. These include a head in the clouds and a heart on fire – which could be used to express heartburn or heartache.
The bandaged heart emoji, showing empathy involved in mending a broken heart seems particularly fitting for 2020.
Meanwhile, the ‘Face Exhaling’ emoji represents relief, exhaustion, or a sigh of disappointment, according to Emojipedia. Although it could also be used to symbolize smoking
The bulk of the release – 200 in total – are new skin tones for ‘couple with a heart’ and the ‘couple kiss’ emoji. The current option only allows for the default yellow skin tone but after the update is rolled out, people will have the option to indicate a variety of interracial relationships.
There is also the addition of gender-neutral beard emoji, with users able to select a bearded man, a bearded woman or a gender-neutral individual with a beard.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, these new symbols won’t be launching onto smartphones until 2021.
‘The Unicode Consortium is a volunteer organization and we would be completely without new emoji in 2021 if it weren’t for the dedication of many volunteers who make this possible,’ the group said.
‘Web apps may start seeing these updates in the coming weeks or months, while major OS updates are likely to be seen any time from January 2021 until potentially as late as October 2021. Technically there is no limitation on any vendor supporting these emojis immediately, should product timelines permit.’
