Some 118 new emojis are coming to the iPhone to help you up your messaging game.
The new arrivals due later this year will include an eclectic mix of fruits, vegetables — and a lot of people.
There will be a new brown mushroom, a broken metal chain, gender-neutral family options, and a lime. Randomly, there will also be 108 emojis of people shaking their heads in different directions and facing sideways. They will be depicted in various skin colours and genders, including some holding canes and others in wheelchairs.
The emoji release, called 15.1, was approved in September and is due to arrive via the next iOS update 17.4 in the spring. This follows iOS 17.3, which was released earlier this month with security fixes for more than 12 bugs.
However, there will be no additional flags arriving, as previously suspected.
Emoji reference website Emojipedia, which is part of the Unicode Consortium, the central bank of all approved emojis, said this because of the "transient nature" of many pride flags and the "challenges including some identities while excluding others".
It added: "In addition to these new four non-gender-specifying family emojis being introduced, the iOS 17.4 beta also changes all of the existing family emoji designs.
"Instead of displaying colorful people emojis alongside one another, all of the family emojis now display different combinations of white silhouettes overlayed on a grey square icon."
Many of the emojis have already been released to Samsung users and look a little different, with more cartoonish aspects for the fruit and mushrooms.
Last month, the ‘crying with laughter’ face was named the most used emoji of 2023.
As the Daily Mail reported, since 2019 Apple has offered iPhone users non-binary versions of nearly every human emoji, ranging from merpeople to chefs.
It said the next batch of emojis is likely to be revealed in the summer and approved in September before a release in 2025.
