31 new emojis to drop with iOS 16.4 for a better messaging experience

With the release of the first iOS 16.4 developer, beta, users get a glimpse of the 31 new emojis that are slated for a public release in March or April 2023. Highlights of this include a pink heart, a tilted shaky face and hand-pushing gestures for both the left and right hands.

This new array of iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 emojis was first presented while it was still in the draft phase in June 2022. While Emojipedia states that there can be new tweaks from now to the time of release, this preview gives quite a reliable idea of what’s in store.

More about the emojis coming out as part of iOS 16.4

Which emojis are in store?

The designs for the 31 new emojis, that have been introduced in Apple devices as part of the Beta version, have been derived from Emoji 15.0 — Unicode’s September 2022 recommendation list.

While today’s emojis offer a varied range of emotions and expressions, this new set includes the highly demanded plain pink-heart emoji, grey heart, light-blue heart, tilted shaking face and hand-pushing emojis in different skin tones.

While the hearts show the inclusion of other shades in the range of coloured hearts provided previously, the shaking face allows users to describe how much they are taken aback or shaken by the text they receive. The hand gestures can mean ‘stop’ or can be used to denote a ‘high five’. It can also be clubbed with other emojis like a fireball to denote high-intensity information.

Others fall in the food and animal spectrum such as a donkey, moose, goose, jellyfish, pea pod, ginger, hyacinth and a wing emoji. The wing emoji can be used to express freedom or show one’s spirit to fly solo. It can be paired with the animals well.

Others include a folding hand fan, flute, hair pick and maracas.

If iPhone users wish to use these emojis now, they will have to download iOS 16.4 beta 1 release, available through Apple’s Developer Program.

The emoji experience for Android users

While these new emojis are available for iOS users, Android users needn’t be disheartened. Google’s Android 13 QPR Beta 2 update for Pixel devices comes with several bug-fixing features and supports the Unicode 15 emojis. This means these emojis shall also be available on Android devices.

As per Sam Mobile, the Android 13 QPR 2 Beta version has 21 of these emojis before it is released in March 2023. These include the donkey, moose, goose, wing, jellyfish, ginger, hyacinth and pea pod emojis. Here, the bluebird emoji is replaced by the new blackbird one.

(Main and featured image credit: Emojipedia)

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