'Melting face' and 36 other emojis arrive with Apple's iOS 15.4 beta
Smiling while your face melts seems a good metaphor for our times.
Following the release of Unicode 14, Apple is finally starting to include the new emojis on iOS with the release of the 15.4 developer beta, Apple Insider has reported. As we detailed last summer, some of the new emojis available are "heart hands," "troll," "biting lip" and "melting face." The latter could be a popular option for our troubled times, smiling as your face literally melts while a pandemic and other strife rages on.
The final version of Unicode 14 also includes multiple skin tone variations of the handshake emoji, the one character you ironically couldn't modify for different skin shades. It took the Unicode Consortium a good two years, but they've finally got a new handshake character that's available with up to 25 different skin tone combinations.
Unicode 14.0 has already arrived on Android 12, which has now gone out to most major smartphone brands. They're only available on Apple's iOS devices with the latest 15.4 developer beta, but will appear widely once the release comes out of beta later this year.