The arrival of new emojis in 2021 will be delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, cell phones and computers should not receive the faces in the next year, having access to them only in 2022. Last Thursday (8), Unicode, the organization responsible for standardizing the character code, revealed that it will delay in six months the launch of the next version, Unicode 14.0.
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The consortium understood that, at the moment, its employees are busy dealing with various problems and, therefore, decided to extend the deadline, which was initially up to March. On the other hand, the announcement does not affect the arrival of the Unicode 13.0 package, which will be launched later this year.
Coronavrs pandemic causes delay in the arrival of emojis Photo: Anna Kellen Bull / dnetc
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The process of approving and releasing new faces takes time and takes months to happen. This is because, after Unicode defines the standards and codes for each design, cell phone and application manufacturers start working on customizations and support for their platforms. that is why each system makes emojis available on different dates and with different looks.
According to the consortium, emojis completed in January only appear on cell phones after September of the same year. Thus, the delay in approving the designs in version 14.0 has a direct impact on the availability of the faces to users in 2021. The expectation was that next year's emojis would be released in March 2021, but the deadline now for September. Considering that, after the disclosure, companies like Apple, WhatsApp and Google will still develop their versions of the stickers, it is unlikely that the 14.0 package will reach the devices before 2022.
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With the delay in the schedule, the organization will accept suggestions for new designs for the Unicode 14.0 package until September 1, 2020. The deadline starts on June 15 this year. Although, usually, big technology companies take the initiative, anyone can suggest new emojis for the entity.
So that users do not run out of emojis in 2021, the organization has been working on a possible solution: the release of strings of emojis, which would be a 13.1 version of the stickers. In this case, the consortium combines pre-existing designs to launch new images, eliminating the need to encode new characters for an individual package. Despite this possible departure, it is worth mentioning once again that totally new designs will not be ready in time and will only arrive in 2022.
The good news is that Unicode version 13.0 emojis, announced this year, will not be affected by the measure. The expectation is that 117 new faces will start to reach cell phones and computers in the next semester. Among the new designs are black cat, slipper, pitted olive, screwdriver and toothbrush. There are also several figurines with an inclusive proposal, such as men in wedding dresses, women in tuxedos and two people hugging, to express empathy.