The Unicode Consortium finalized version 8.0 of the Unicode standard yesterday—the latest iteration of the spec that helps our computers and phones keep all their special characters straight. As with any Unicode update, the 37 new emoji are probably the most entertaining things to look at. The folks at Emojipedia have the full list, but a few of our favorites include "Burrito," "Unicorn Face," "Nerd Face," "Face With Rolling Eyes," "Sign Of The Horns," and "Crab."
You can see some sample images over on the Unicode Consortium's site, though companies generally design their own versions of these icons to use in their software to keep things visually consistent.
Unicode 8.0 also includes the skin tone modifiers for emoji that we first reported on last year. Unicode implementers should now make all human characters (including faces and arm/hand emoji) a "non-human" color by default but include five different skin tone modifiers that can be used based on the color the user wants those emoji to be. Apple implemented these modifiers in iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3, back when Unicode 8.0 was still a draft, and Microsoft looks to support them in the upcoming Windows 10. Apple went with a Simpsons-esque yellow for its non-human tone, while Microsoft went with a zombie-ish grey.
Before we can start sending these emoji to each other, companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft will need to add support for them to their operating systems. Apple was quick to adopt the skin tone modifiers, but it hasn't yet implemented many of the 250 emoji introduced in Unicode 7. Windows 10 appears to include at least some of those Unicode 7.0 emoji; Android 5.x does not, but the M release is right around the corner and could include support for more of them.
Other, non-emoji-related improvements include lowercase Cherokee syllables and symbols for the Ik, Tai Ahom, and Arwi languages.
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