Using emoji on the iPhone

2009-02-04 08:38:00

A screenshot of the emoji keyboard

Hooray for Japanese silliness! For years now (I've no clue when this got started) emoji have been a staple of Japanese cellphone culture. Combining cuteness with typing efficiency, the Japanese implemented a system involving smileys and dozens of other icons in their keitai. One can cut down on the amount of words tremendously by simply stringing together a few of these symbols to form a semi-sentence.

Or as Ars Technica member Palad1 puts it:

I'm 0.59 GBP poorer but about 12.2315% hipper now that I can text the wife ":metro: :home: :cat: :sushi: :hotmonkeysex: ?". Thanks Ars, for helping me in my eternal quest for marital nooky!

There are multiple ways of getting emoji to work on your iPhone, though all of them require firmware version 2.2 or higher. Unfortunately the emoji keyboard is invisible per default outside Japan, but using apps like Typing Genius - Get emoji ($0.99) one can enable the option in System Preferences.


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