Cupcake and Mango Emojis Are on the Way
The buffet of delicious foods already available in the iPhone emoji library is impressive (and diverse): We’ve got dumplings, kebabs, tacos, paella, and a baguette, but nonetheless it always feels as though something is missing. Why don’t we have the perfect emoji to signify the shellfish cookout planned for the summer? And while we have a pie and a cake, there’s one more classic dessert that’s long been absent from the lineup. Well, Apple has at last promised to rectify that situation with a whole new set of 70 emojis and even released a preview of what we can expect.
While the preview doesn’t reveal every single new emoji, it does give us just a little taste: In the food category, you’ll find a mango, a head of leafy greens, a vanilla frosted cupcake, a mooncake—a traditional Chinese dessert served during the Mid-Autumn Festival—and a lobster, which could be interpreted as an addition to the emoji zoo, but which I am choosing to include with the food. If we’re getting into specifics here, those greens are technically supposed to be bok choy but could pass for lettuce.
Jeremy Burge, the founder of Emojipedia and creator of World Emoji Day (which is today, by the way), told CNN that the most common emoji requests call for more representation, so you’ll also find redheaded, bald, and curly-haired emojis in the new release, too.
The Unicode Consortium—which manages the release of new emojis—first announced the upgrade back in February. Other food emojis will include a bagel (most likely to cut in half, so it’s not confused for the doughnut) and a salt shaker. Though these emojis aren’t featured in this preview, you will find them in the official release.
Speaking of which, there’s still no word on exactly what day we’re supposed to finally see these new emojis on our phones. The emojis were originally slated for release in June, but likely won't be joining the text lexicon until August or September.
