To celebrate one of the most important special days of the year, World Emoji Day, Google has announced that they will be bringing back some of their classic older emoji designs. Specifically, they will bring the older designs from eight years ago of some of their most popular animal emojis to the Android 11 emoji keyboard. When they do roll that out, the update will also be including 117 new emojis from the Emoji 13.0 update which those on the beta program have already seen.
The animal emojis like the turtle, dinosaur, frog are still available of course but they have been modified over the years. The original though, which mostly were introduced back in 2012 as part of Android 4.3 and their first native emoji set, were pretty popular and the changes applied over the years weren’t always welcomed with open arms. And so with the upcoming Android 11 emoji keyboard, we’ll be seeing and updated animal section.
While some of the animals like the turtle and the frog will be going back to its classic design, some are also being updated. The hatching chick will go classic but without the pieces of shell in the air while the pig face will be smiling in Android 11. The octopus will also look more friendly while the scorpion will not be so scary as it will be smiling. They are also making the whale emoji more anatomically correct. Some of the emojis will also be updated to adapt to the dark theme.
As for the Emoji 13.0 update, there will be 117 new ones coming to devices during this second half of 2020. As usual, designs will vary by vendor so hopefully we’ll soon see what Google’s designs for this will be. We’ll get new emojis like smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, an anatomical heart, ninja, man and woman in tuxedo, woman feeding baby (and man feeding baby too!), people hugging (pre-covid), etc.
As to when we’ll start seeing a stable version of Android 11, that is still up in the air right now. If you can’t wait, you can always sign up for the Android Beta program.
