KUALA LUMPUR, July 17 — It's World Emoji Day again, folks, which means celebrating those little icons that compress a myriad of emotions into universally-understood images.
Started by Emojipedia it celebrates all emojis every July 17 and now even has a World Emoji Awards that you can check out on Twitter here.
Fittingly this year's Lifetime Achievement Award went to the "crying face" emoji that probably encapsulates all our feelings about the current pandemic.
Depressing current affairs aside, Apple has again trotted out new fun things on the emoji side by powering up its Memojis with various new fun customisations of which I have taken way too many screenshots.
Memoji you, Memoji me
If you're on Android, a quick explainer of Memojis. Memojis are basically customisable avatars that you can use in place of emojis to describe your state of mind.
The "Me" in Memoji refers to how you can customise your Memoji as either the closest approximation to you or your fantasy persona.
I'm very boring so my Memoji looks mostly like me but with better skin and with a less murderous expression ("I'm going to kill you" is my default state).
Apple is adding a lot more options for customising your Memojis ― you can already select from various options for skin colour, hairstyles and accessories but iOS 15 will add more gestures as well as more ways to kill time tweaking your Sim... I mean, Memoji.
What's in your Memoji wardrobe
It's nice there's some thought to accessibility as iOS 15 will add an oxygen tube, hearing aids, soft helmets as well as cochlear implants to your options.
Besides that, Apple has added more than 40 new outfits that let you select three colours, a main one and two accents.
You also get to live out your fantasy character daydreams as Apple now lets you choose different colours for each eye. Speaking of eyes, Apple has also added a lot more designs for your glasses.
Besides that, Apple has added new sticker emojis including a hand wave, light bulb moment and a few other cute ones you can discover on your own.
Give them to me now
The bad news is these new Memoji options are only coming with the iOS 15 update sometime in the Fall.
Good news is, if you're adventurous and have very little self-preservation like I do, you can try installing the public beta of iOS 15 at beta.apple.com and try them out for yourself.
To be safe, perhaps try installing it on a backup phone and not your main phone though I've installed it on my primary phone because pandemic time is the best time to YOLO.
You can check out what else iOS 15 has in store for you at the iOS 15 Preview page here.
