10 Years of Emojis on iPhone: A Brief Timeline

Nov. 22, 2018

Apple has played a major role in popularizing emojis ever since they arrived on the iPhone 10 years ago on November 21, 2008. Back then,emojiswere only available on the iPhone solely for users in Japan when iOS was called the iPhone OS.

Now that emojis have completed 10 years since their arrival on the iPhone, let’s take a look at brief the history behind them and how they’ve evolved over the years.An example of how emojis have changed over time

Since their introduction in 2008, thenumber of emojis on iOS has gone up to 2,776, and every new iOS released adds new emojis with updated looks. Here are a few examples:

The next major evolution came with Animojis, animated emojis that came to life by tracking the movement of users through the iPhone’s TrueDepth sensors. This meant users could create unique Animojis that sang along and moved just as they did.

Earlier this year, Apple introduced theMemoji, which is basically a personalized version of Animoji designed for each individual user. Users can change almost everything about their Memoji, be it the hair, eyes or any other facial attribute.

The journey also had some ups and down. For example, Apple had to change the bagel emoji’s design after some people criticized it over the lack of cream cheese or any other filling in it. Apple also introduced a whole host of new‘Accessibility Emojis‘that are expected to help people with disabilities express themselves better.

What’s Next for Emojis on iPhones?

It would be interesting to see what new tricks Apple has in the pipelines to make the humble emojis more interactive. We can hope that the company lets users create emojis out of everyday objects that don’t yet have a emoji counterpart. Of course, that sounds a little too far-fetched but with 3D scanning becoming a possibility for phones, you never know.