The Unicode Consortium’s Emoji 13.1 update, which brings 217 new symbols to the official universal list, is working its way down to the end user. They’ve already landed for a lot of people on Gboard and iOS, but now, even more Android users will be able to access them — that is, if they use WhatsApp.
The Facebook-owned messaging app designs its own library of emoji based on the consortium’s list — before you ask, Facebook also has its own emoji design — and is rolling out the 13.1 set with beta version 2.21.16.10 of the Android app, according to WABetaInfo.
Many of these emoji are coded as sequences of previously-existing emoji — person with beard linked to the female symbol by a zero-width joiner creates the new Woman with Beard emoji — so users will be able to search for simpler terms (as an example, “fog”) to pull a new picture (clinically dubbed “Face in Clouds” per Emojipedia).
Betas being what they are, it should be noted that WhatsApp still needs to work on applying the skin tone modifier to the “Kiss” and “Couple” series of emoji where two people stand in front of a heart — indeed, between the factors of sex and skin tone, these emoji make up the majority of the new set. Users are able to customize the combination of sexes, but they can only do so in the default yellow skin tone.
You can download beta v2.21.16.10 of WhatsApp through APK Mirror.
