Samsung One UI 4.0 Emoji Changelog
Today Samsung has begun rolling out the latest version of its Android software layer, One UI 4.0. This update includes popular emoji recommendations from late 2020, such as the Heart on Fire and Face with Spiral Eyes.
Above: all the new emojis within Samsung One UI 4.0. Image: Samsung / Emojipedia composite.[1]
Over 200 new emojis have been introduced to Samsung devices in One UI 4.0, all of which are from September 2020's Emoji 13.1 recommendations.
One UI 4.0 does not include the brand new emoji recommendations recently made via Emoji 14.0[2], such as Melting Face, Saluting Face, and Heart Hands.
While Samsung's July 2021 update, One UI 3.1.1, modified a handful of emojis' designs including, today's One UI 4.0 does not revise any existing emojis.
This means that both 🧔 Person: Beard and the 💉 Syringe have continued with their previous designs.
The lack of an update to the 💉 Syringe contracts with most major vendor updates throughout 2021, where the syringe's barrel has had its blood-like contents and droplets removed.
Above: Samsung's unchanged 💉 Syringe design alongside other vendors' current designs for this emoji.
The 🧔 Person: Beard's lack of change appears to be due to an odd implementation choice for the new 🧔♂️ Man: Beard emoji sequence, which is discussed below.
🆕 New
There are three new smiley emojis in One UI 4.0.
Two new hearts have also debuted on eligible Samsung devices: ❤️🔥 Heart on Fire and ❤️🩹 Mending Heart.
This update also introduces new gender-specifying variants of 🧔 Person: Beard: 🧔♀️ Woman: Beard and 🧔♂️ Man: Beard. Both of these new emojis support skin tone modifiers.
Above: 🧔♀️ Woman: Beard as it now appears on Samsung devices.
Samsung have, however, appear to have made a mistake in their implementation of the new 🧔♂️ Man: Beard emoji.
In providing support to Emoji 13.1, other emoji vendors have opted to migrate their existing 🧔 Person: Beard design to the new 🧔♂️ Man: Beard emoji. While doing so, they also provided a completely new gender neutral design to the 🧔 Person: Beard.
Above: the new 🧔♂️ Man: Beard emoji as it appears in One UI 4.0, with a more gender neutral design than the 🧔 Person: Beard emoji.
However, instead of emulating other vendors, Samsung have instead provided the new 🧔♂️ Man: Beard emoji with a completely new gender neutral appearance and kept the 🧔 Person: Beard's original design.[3]
Above: the design of the 🧔 Person: Beard emoji remains unchanged in One UI 4.0.
It is possible that the 🧔 Person: Beard and 🧔♂️ Man: Beard emojis will swap designs in a future update.
The remaining new emojis in One UI 4.0 are different skin tone combinations of both 💑 Couple with Heart and 💏 Kiss emojis.
Above: 💑 Couple with Heart and its variants now comes with a choice of skin tones for either person.
Above: 💏 Kiss and its variants now come with a choice of skin tones for either person.
🔁 Samsung's Android Emojis
Despite manufacturing Android-based devices, Samsung ships phones using its own custom emoji font that differs from the emoji set provided by Google.
It was the sole Android manufacturer to do so between 2016 and early 2021, after HTC and LG retired their custom emoji sets in favor of Google's designs.
LG did recently revive their own custom emoji set for their LG Velvet devices. This update is expected to be the vendor's last, however, as earlier this year LG official withdrew from the mobile device manufacturing market.
Above: a selection of emojis from LG's custom emoji set.
In 2021, the rule is that phones running Android will display Google's emoji set unless the phone is a Samsung device or an LG Velvet.
There is a caveat, however. Many apps on Android also use their own custom emoji designs, regardless of whether run on Samsung or not. These include Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp.
This is in contrast to iOS, where the native Apple emoji set is used across all major apps.
Additionally, many popular applications on Android devices are likely to be running Google's EmojiCompat library via their use of the latest version of AppCompat.
This means that Samsung devices will see Google's emoji designs for Emoji 14.0 emojis if they appear within apps such as Snapchat.
📶 Release
The rollout of Samsung's One UI 4.0 update has begun today for the Galaxy S21 series of devices in select regions.
The rollout of One UI 4.0 is expected to continue over the next number of weeks and months, with rollout varying by device and region across late 2021 and early 2022.
📖 Read More
- All of Samsung's emojis
- All new emojis in Samsung's One UI 4.0
- All the changed emoji designs in Samsung's One UI 4.0
- Samsung One UI 2.5 Emoji Changelog
The design for 🧑🏽❤️🧑🏼 Couple with Heart: Person, Person, Medium Skin Tone, Medium-Light Skin Tone does not appear to be correctly rendered in the initial release of One UI 4.0, but we have included a correct composite design in this image in the expectation that this design rendering error will be resolved in a future Samsung update. ↩︎
Certain apps will, however, support Emoji 14.0 in Google's emoji designs when run on Samsung devices in the near future thanks to Google's EmojiCompat and AppCompat libraries. ↩︎
This is not the first time a Samsung design has had an oddly swapped implementation. Between 2016 and 2020, the designs for Samsung's 🇺 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter U and 🇻 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter V designs were swapped. You can read more about this here. ↩︎