COVID-19 delays the annual new emojis
Charlotte Eykerman and Nanor Pontigian Opinion Editor and Science & Tech Editor, The Pawprint
The organisation, Unicode Consortium, has recently announced that there will be a delay in releasing the new emojis. They had planned for them to be finalised in March of 2020 but have now been forced to postpone the release date to September of 2021.
Apple and Google, will likely struggle to implement these new designs on the original plan. There might be a chance that 2021 might not even reveal any brand new emojis. This will cause some aggravation and irritation from some people.
Even though this has been an upsetting news, the 2020 emoji designs are still going to be released. They’re going to include bubble tea, people hugging and a transgender flag.
According to Jeremy Burge, the chief emoji officer for Emojipedia, he states, “While there might not be any new emojis, there will still be new sequences.”
The sequences are the simple changes in things like skin tone. For example, looking at the emoji of the “construction worker” 👷, this is known as a basic emoji. The light skin toned 👷🏻♂️ in this case is in fact a sequence of the basic emoji. It might look like one emoji, but there are six different skin tones to choose from.
A little fun fact, since the virus, the microbe emoji and the face with a medical mask has been quite popular and “should be enough for the time being”, according to Burge.
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