After the news of a brand-new, racially diverse, gender-neutral (kind-of) and generally more inclusive emoji pack broke in early 2015, the day has finally arrived. New emojis are available on iPhones everywhere, as part of the iOS 8.3 update.
Users in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates, time to breathe a collective sigh of relief: you can FINALLY send your nation's flag. Whew.
However, the new multi-cultural emojis won't appear properly on all devices. If your phone isn't updated, isn't an iPhone (Android users are left out for now) or you are viewing the new emojis on a different platform (like Twitter), the multi-cultural emojis will look super strange. Since the racially diverse emojis are a subset of an emoji that exists already, they have yet to be adopted by all platforms, and instead appear as aliens. Because, duh. Check out the difference below.
New emojis with the update:
What the new emojis look like without the update:
In a strange twist, there is also secret Spock emoji that geeks everywhere can download. No one knows if Apple will begin to offer it as part of the normal emoji pack or not, but in the meantime, here is the shortcut to download.
1 – Open this Tweet on your iPhone 2 – Copy the Vulcan salute emoji 3 – Go to Settings >> General >> Keyboard >> Shortcuts >> + 4 – Paste the Vulcan salute emoji into the Phrase section 5 – Create a shortcut, the tap Save
Type the shortcut phrase and presto, Spock. Note, this will only work if you (and the people you send the emoji to) are updated iOS 8.3. And are a super geek.