Apple took advantage of the World Emoji Day to reveal a bunch of new emojis that will be introduced for users worldwide with the launch of iOS 14 later this year.
The 13 new additions include the Dodo bird, nesting dolls, piñata, and tamale. There’s also the ‘Italian’ pinched hand gesture, a new coin, as well as anatomical symbols for heart and lungs.
Approved by Unicode as part of Emoji 13.0, the iOS 14 emoji list for this year was actually announced back in January. Considering that each platform vendor creates its own designs for every emoji, these usually take until the second half of the year to arrive in operating system updates for end-users.
Apple has now shown the following new 2020 emojis, coming later this fall to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS:
- Dodo
- Nesting Dolls
- Piñata
- Tamale
- Pinched Fingers
- Boomerang
- Ninja
- Coin
- Anatomical Heart
- Beaver
- Transgender Symbol
- Bubble Tea
- Lungs
Some other emojis approved and expected to come to iOS this year include the Smiling Face with Tear, the Disguised Face, and People Hugging emoji.
New Emojis Coming to iOS
Potentially more pertinent than previously anticipated in 2020 is the emoji for lungs, which comes together with an anatomical heart:
One of the most expected new emojis that got approved this year is the ‘Italian’ hand gesture (Pinched Fingers) that looks like this on Apple platforms:
Another rather beautiful icon is the nesting dolls, which showcase certain flower emojis from Apple’s flower collection. It is not often helpful to zoom into an emoji as they usually have very small sizes, but the goal is to be identified when sent with or without a text. The nesting dolls emoji is a clear instance of a very good job done:
The Piñata and Tamale emojis are shown in this preview in great detail as well, with the Piñata flaunting a traditional nine-point design.
Lately, there have been calls for more mark-wearing emojis in 2020, as the existing Face with Medical Mask emoji is a sad or sick-looking face. Considering that new emoji proposals take about two years to finally get to end-users, we aren’t likely to see any COVID-specific emojis on iPhones for now.
However, Apple is providing a few new Memoji options for different headwear and colored face masks, which can be used as stickers in iOS messages.
Finally, a Ninja emoji, approved before the global shutdown, is not exactly an alternative to a regular face-mask, but it looks good as it is. This is the version that will be coming to iOS later in fall:
New Emojis’ Release Date
The new emojis to come to iOS are set to appear in the second half of this year, most probably in a release such as iOS 14.1 or iOS 14.2 in October. This was the case for iOS 13.2 last year, iOS 12.1 in 2018, and iOS 11.1 in 2017.
If previous schedules are anything to adopt, we can expect the emojis to come to a beta release of iOS in September or October, after the launch of iOS 14.0.
