First Look at New Whatsapp Emojis!

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Every year, official arbiters of online expression at the Unicode Consortium consider new ways for vocabulary-deficient people to express themselves online. It’s a long and drawn-out process for new emoji to be added to the official Unicode list, which means that we’re already looking at the emoji under consideration for next year.

Candidates for new emoji next year now include a service dog, every possible combination of couples holding hands, and a deaf person. In total, there are 179 new emoji characters short-listed for inclusion in Emoji 12.0, a new version of our favorite tiny pictures that will be released in the first half of next year.

There are 61 unique emoji characters being considered for inclusion, and when you take into account variants of the same character (for example, changes to skin or hair color) the total number of different characters is 179. According to Emojipedia, the 61 unique characters are:

  1. Service Dog
  2. Deaf Person
  3. Yawning Face
  4. Ringed Planet
  5. Axe
  6. Razor
  7. Parachute
  8. Diya Lamp
  9. Skunk
  10. Diving Mask
  11. Blue Square
  12. Standing Person
  13. Mechanical Arm
  14. Kneeling Person
  15. Mechanical Leg
  16. Pinching Hand
  17. Brown Heart
  18. Safety Vest
  19. One-Piece Swimsuit
  20. Sari
  21. Briefs
  22. Ear With Hearing Aid
  23. Shorts
  24. Ballet Shoes
  25. Hindu Temple
  26. Sloth
  27. Otter
  28. Orangutan
  29. Oyster
  30. Garlic
  31. Onion
  32. Falafel
  33. Butter
  34. Beverage Box
  35. Maté
  36. Auto Rickshaw
  37. Kite
  38. Ice Cube
  39. Banjo
  40. Waffle
  41. Probing Cane
  42. Blood Drop
  43. Yo-Yo
  44. Adhesive Bandage
  45. Chair
  46. Orange Circle
  47. Green Circle
  48. Motorized Wheelchair
  49. Purple Circle
  50. Brown Circle
  51. Yellow Circle
  52. Stethoscope
  53. Red Square
  54. Yellow Square
  55. Green Square
  56. Brown Square
  57. Purple Square
  58. Guide Dog
  59. Flamingo
  60. Manual Wheelchair
  61. Orange Square

The vote on approval of the new characters will happen in September, with the changes rolling out in Unicode 12.0, which will be published in the first quarter of 2019. From there, it’s up to software manufacturers to include the new characters in their updates, so don’t expect to see the new emoji on your device until the middle of 2019 at the earliest.