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Yes, the new emojis in iOS 9.1 are coming to Android… eventually

A couple of weeks ago, Hiroshi Lockheimer was formally named senior vice president of Android, Chrome OS, and Chromecast operations. And while his involvement with Android definitely isn’t new, it seems he wants to kick off this position of slightly higher stature on good note.

On Twitter late last night, Lockheimer confirmed that the new emojis from Unicode 7 and 8 —  the ones that Apple just pushed to iOS devices in version 9.1 of its mobile OS — are on their way…

[tweet https://twitter.com/lockheimer/status/657404941154172928 align=’center’]

This tweet probably comes in indirect response to a Reddit thread from yesterday, complaining about the fact that Google is quite often playing catch up when it comes to the adorable faces and icons. The Mountain View company was slower to introduce an emoji keyboard after Apple introduced it to Japan in iOS 2, and finally brought it international with iOS 5.

It’s not clear at this point which version of Android will be getting the taco, the middle-finger, and the burrito, but it’s likely going to happen before Google releases Android 7.0 next year. I’d put money on seeing it come to version 6.1, which will probably land sometime in the next few months.

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Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.