Apple is celebrating the World Emoji Day by teasing fans with a new set of emojis expected to be released later this year. Apple said that it would release 59 new emojis later this year and it will be available on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the Apple Watch.
Apple said that this new set of emojis would include a new disability-themed option. The tech giant said that it would help in promoting inclusiveness, especially those from the people who are disabled.
In a statement, Apple said, "Following Apple's proposal to the United Consortium last year to introduce more disability-themed emoji, a new guide dog, an ear with a hearing aid, wheelchairs, a prosthetic arm, and a prosthetic leg will be available in the emoji keyboard."
Apart from introducing new emojis, Apple said that it is also making changes an improvements on existing ones. One emoji, in particular, the Holding Hand emoji, will get a major upgrade. Apple users can now select any skin tone and gender combination of this popular emoji. Apple said that there are more than 70 possible combinations brought about by this new upgrade.
Apple said that its new set of emojis would include a new smiley face for yawning and a one-piece swimsuit. It is also adding new food items into its growing list of emojis. Among those foods that were confirmed are butter, waffle, garlic, and falafel. New animals, like the skunk, sloth, orangutan, and flamingo, are also slated to be added into the list.
When gender option is applied, these 59 new emojis will make up for a total of 75 variations. When a skin tone is included, that gives a total of 230 new emoji variations. According to Apple, the Unicode Consortium approved this 2019 set of new emojis earlies this year. The new emojis were created by Apple and are based on the approved characters as based on the Unicode 12.0 guidelines.
As for the availability of these new emojis, Apple said that they would be available sometime this fall. On the other hand, the tech giant did not specify whether the new emojis will be available on the current iOS 13. The company is slated to release an update, iOS 13.1, in the near future and it did not specify whether users need to update their operating system in order to get their hands into these new emojis. Apple also did not confirm whether these new emojis will be available to current versions of OS X and Apple Watch operating system.
