We could see new emoji added eventually to iOS 17 which would increase the number available from the current 3,600+. With World Emoji Day taking place this coming Monday, July 17th, Emojipedia released illustrations of some of the new emoji that users might soon have at their fingertips. These include a lime emoji, a head shaking ‘no’ by moving horizontally, a head shaking ‘yes’ by moving vertically, the mythical Phoenix bird, four gender neutral family emoji.
The list of new emoji candidates in Emoji 15.1 expands when you take into account various skin tones and gender variants. Keep in mind that the emoji images you see on Emojipedia are not the final designs. The samples were created by Emojipedia’s Head of Emoji Design Joshua Jones influenced by the Apple emoji set. It is up to each individual company such as Apple and Google to make design changes.
New emoji coming in Emoji 15.1
There will be 108 new emoji that specify a certain direction. All of them come from six existing person emojis: Person Walking, Person Running, Person Kneeling, Person with White Cane, Person in Manual Wheelchair, and Person in Motorized Wheelchair. Including different variations for skin tone and gender, this alone is adding 108 new emoji to the list.
Even though the designs are not final and can be changed by individual vendors like Apple and Google, once an emoji is ready to be approved, it is unusual for it to be rejected. Once approved by Unicode in September, the emoji are then developed for use with, for example, iOS and Android. Eventually, they are sent out as part of a software update. But these updates do not typically get released right away. For example, Apple just updated its inventory of emoji with the release of iOS 16.4 this past March.
Even though the new emoji will be approved in September, they might not be released for iOS right away. With iOS 17 expected to be dropped in September, around the time the new iPhone models are unveiled, Apple typically waits for an update after the new build becomes available. You’re probably better off not expecting emoji 15.1 to surface on your iPhone until next year’s first quarter.
