After years of waiting, Apple has at last revealed a Scottish saltire emoji, in news that is likely to be met with ‘grinning face’ emojis all the way from Stranraer to Shetland.
The St Andrew’s Cross is not the only new addition coming soon to your iPhone: the flags of England and Wales will also be included, bringing an end to the hitherto emoji-hegemony of the Union Jack.
Consumers can also look forwards to emojis such as a hedgehog, a T-Rex, a breastfeeding woman and a zombie, diversifying the emoji range to reflect today’s society.
The designs were approved by the Unicode Consortium – the company which oversees all the major tech corporations – and are likely to be released later this year, serving as the perfect digital stocking filler – although we are still waiting on an actual stocking filler emoji.
The emoji began its life on Japanese mobile phones in the late 90’s and has snowballed in popularity.
Today there are over 1000 emojis, with the ‘crying laughing face’ emoji even deemed the 2015 Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries, showing how the humble emoji has gone beyond being a mere gimmick and is now a language in itself.
There is now a World Emoji Day (July 17th – mark your calendars), and who can forget this year’s impressively atrocious Emoji Movie.
As welcome as the new additions are, however, there are still some noticeable omissions. Where, for instance, is the deep fried mars bar emoji? Or the Irn Bru emoji? Apple needs to sort out its priorities.
Image: cris.bloomfield