Emojing has already replaced texting as the go-to zero-effort communication tool of youngsters everywhere, and all those emoji version of popular songs and TV shows are about a lot more elaborate thanks to huge unicode update.

250 new emoji have been added to unicode standard 7.0 that is used to standardize the presentation of text across different platforms like iOS, Android, and Windows, and while it’s still up to software makers to actually implement the new standards, you can expect them to land on iOS pretty soon.

According to the Unicode Consortium which dictates the standards, the new set of emoji characters are mostly derived from characters that have been widely used in Wingdings and Webdings font, that include a middle finger and the Vulcan Salute.

The new emoji still don’t contain racially diverse humans, but they did manage to pack in four new rockets, seven airplanes and 16 leaf configurations to the delight of botanists everywhere.

Emoji characters have been supported on OS X since Lion was released, while iOS has always supported the characters and the upcoming iOS 8 release will make emoji more prominent as the international keyboard button is replaced with a smiling emoji.

Apple says it’s been working with the Unicode Consortium to add more racial diversity to the emoji set, but it looks like those updates won’t make it into the standard early enough for iOS 8. The current standard mostly features white people, and the only persons added to the new character set is a “Man In Business Suit Levitating” and a “Sleuth Or Spy.”

Source: Unicode Inc

Via: The Verge