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 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 present time, its employees are busy dealing with various problems and, therefore, decided to extend the deadline, which was initially until March. On the other hand, the announcement does not affect the arrival of the Unicode 13.0 package, which will be released later this year.
Coronavirus pandemic causes delay in the arrival of emojis – Photo: Anna Kellen Bull / dnetc
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The process of approval and release of new faces takes time and takes months to happen. This is because, after Unicode has defined 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 version 14.0 designs has a direct impact on making faces available to users in 2021. Expectations were that next year’s emojis would be released in March 2021, but the deadline is 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 large technology companies take the initiative, anyone can suggest new emojis for the entity.
In order for users not to be totally without emojis in 2021, the organization has been working on a possible solution: the release of strings of emojis, which would be a version 13.1 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 unprecedented package. Despite this possible exit, 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 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.
