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All your WhatsApp emojis are about to change

They're getting their own custom versions

All your WhatsApp emojis are about to change
03 October 2017

Not gonna lie to you: I absolutely love emojis. And I love emojis in WhatsApp.

My favourites? Cry laugh obviously, for moments of extreme banter where a ‘lol’ will not suffice, the beer emoji because beer is great and - best of all - the thumbs up emoji; the ultimate timesaver which is the new universal code for ‘message received and no need for us to talk any further on this subject’.

I’m sure you’re different though, and good for you - there are plenty of emojis out there and they all deserve their day in the sun.

But what I didn’t really feel was that the set of emojis that WhatsApp had available - which were Apple’s emojis, and were used on both Apple and Android/Windows devices - were not doing the job.

So I’m confused to report that WhatsApp, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to introduce its own set of emojis.

“Wow”, you’re thinking, “whilst I was happy with the emojis already available, if they’ve decided to make this move, they must have done it because they had something extra-special and new lined up to replace the Apple ones; something completely gamechanging and well worth the effort they’re putting in”.

Well, hapless reader, you have thought wrong because the new emojis are basically exactly the same.

I mean, there are some differences. I’m sure we can all agree it was mega important that the two dancing bunny girls have their hands in the air rather than in double teapot formation.

A double egg? Hey WhatsApp, you must be yoking!

This summed up most people’s thoughts:

But wait - there’s one development that might be useful?

THANK GOD. Thank you WhatsApp, it definitely would have killed us to have had to wait a couple more weeks to get hold of these crucial emojis.

The new emoji set is only in beta, so it’s possible that WhatsApp will change some of them before they officially launch, but unless they change the beer one to actually provide you with a real life fizzing stein held by a German waitress complete with an oompah band backing that visits you when you press it I’m not that interested.

Meanwhile, in other pointless emoji-change news, Facebook - who own WhatsApp - have announced that Messenger is going in the other direction, and will no longer be using its own proprietary set of emojis; insetad, the Android and web version will use Facebook’s set of emojis, with the iPhone version using Apple’s one - they ones they’re busy ditching from WhatsApp.

Current mood: