Are you ready for the 5 shades of emojis? Well, it seems Apple has finally heard the prayers of users as a new set of emoji characters have been introduced. Recently the company launched an all new version of the iOS which includes a racially diverse emoji library.
Rise Of The Racially Diverse Emojis
The latest iOS 8.3 for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, which was in beta for many months, introduces more than 300 emojis with diversity options along with a brand-new keyboard for adding the new symbols. The keyboard has a scrollable UI that to accommodate the wider set of emojis available in this latest update in a better way. Apple’s new emoji library includes characters in 5 different skin shades. Apart from the fair-skinned or Caucasian faces already available in the previous versions, the new collection includes golden yellow, brown, dark brown and black shades. Further, emojis of same sex couples and even families have also been added to the assortment.
Moreover, the new iOS version also has several new Siri languages that aims to help international users through the virtual personal assistant from Apple. The update includes Siri in Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Danish, Thai, Swedish and Dutch. The voice of Siri has also been modified in the update. However, the main focus of almost all users are on the introduction of racially diverse emojis.
Making Communication Fun
Carolina Milanesi, head and chief of research at U.S. business for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said “Emoji have become huge for people. This is how a lot of teens now communicate. There’s been a lot of debate recently about how African-Americans and Hispanics aren’t represented in those emojis. For some people, it’s important. Is it life changing? Of course not.”
If you ask me, it surely does not make any difference to your life, but it certainly makes communicating with your friends and family more fun and exciting. There have been a lot of complaints regarding the dearth of racial diversity in the emojis available in iOS. As a result, many other skin tones were added to the list by the Unicode Consortium, which primarily focuses on developing software standards. The skin tones for the faces were based on the Fitzpatrick scale, which is a widely recognized standard utilized by dermatologists.
A Radical Transformation
Earlier the platform only included 3 characters that represented the non-Caucasian people, namely a man with a traditional Chinese skull cap with slanted and smaller eyes, a man wearing a turban with brown skin and a man with a cossack hat. However, now these 3 emojis, like other human faces, are available in the generic default shade of bright yellow, which has been dubbed “jaundiced” by the media. Particularly, the guy with the Chinese skull cap is now available in different shades and has same eyes as others.
The new library also includes emojis which represent same-sex relationships, like families with 2 fathers and 2 mothers. It also has a wider range of flags as well. It has been declared that a total of
There will also reportedly be a greater variety of flags 300 new emojis will be added. However, Van Baker, Gartner VP for Mobility, says there is “Nothing to get excited about,” as it simply “Looks like bug fixes and emojis.”
Update & Enjoy
No matter what you can still choose to make your chats and conversations more exciting, entertaining and fun with these new range of emojis. To download the latest iOS 8.3 version, simply go to Settings, then select General and finally choose Software Update; or can connect your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with your computer and update via iTunes.
What do you think about the new line of emojis? How excited are you about it? Do you think it doesn’t actually make a difference? Share your thoughts with me by commenting below. I would love to hear from you.
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