Overview
Be honest, because you know you did it and you know you like it. We all want to deny it, but if someone thumbed through your notes and text messages on your iPhone or iPod Touch they’d be all over the place. I’m talking about Emoji, ladies and gentlemen, yes emoji. All of us want to deny that we have them enabled on our iPhones or iPod Touches but they are there, emoji. They are so, darn cute we love them and love to hate them.
For those of you who may be a little new to this phenomenon let me back it up for a bit. Emoji is the Japanese term for emoticons. You know emoticons, the cute little pictures we type in emails, test messages, and message board posts. Just to take it a little deeper, the “e” in emoji means “picture” in Japanese and the “moji” in emoji means letter in Japanese. See how that all works out nice and neat?
Now, the easiest way to enable emoji is to purchase one of the many apps that enables emoji on your iPhone or IPod Touch. One of the most popular apps in the App store is emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard by SpiceLoop. emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard has been in the Top 25 Paid apps for months. It has even hit the #1 slot in the Top Paid apps in the Entertainment category. The developers of emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard were able to hit those incredible numbers because it was one of the earliest apps released to enable emoji.
Features
Emoji in general is enabled on the iPhone or iPod Touch through the standard keyboard functionality. Once enabled you have a whopping 25 pages of emoji broken up into 5 categories. emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard is a tiny app and it makes enabling emoji on your iPhone or iPod Touch pretty darn easy. The directions to enabling and then adding the Japanese keyboard are on emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard’s page in iTunes. Because emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard is a standalone app there really isn’t that much to it. But, SpiceLoop did include pages of the actual emoji code for each emoji character just in case you are building an iPhone or iPod Touch specific website or blog. Why did I say iPhone or iPod Touch specific website or blog? Well, emoji is really only visible on iPhones or iPod Touches.
The Breakdown
The Good
What’s not to like. It’s all good. emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard adds spice to your notes, calendars, and text messages. Plus because the basic function of emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard is to enable emoji so the footprint on your iPhone or iPod Touch will be really small. That is always good if you are hurting for space. Also, for those of you who build iPhone only websites and blogs, you don’t need to go searching for emoji or emoticon code, just whip out your iPhone or iPod Touch and surf the emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard app for accurate codes.
The Bad
For the same price you can actually get emoji enabled with a real app that does something. I also have to be honest and say that if you search hard enough you may be able to find an app that will enable them for free. Now the next point I’d like to make isn’t about emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard, it is about that emoji or emoticon code isn’t standardized. As a result, the emoji on the iPhone and iPod Touch is only visible to other iPhone or iPod Touch users on version 2.2 or higher. With that said, if you send a cute emoji to your buddy who has a Blackberry all they will see is garbled characters or little squares. So, have fun with emoji on your iPhone or iPod Touch and send them to your friends with iPhones or iPod Touches but that is where the fun ends. Sorry guys.
The Comparison
There are quite a few emoji enabling apps in the App Store. You need to know that they all enable the same thing regardless of what their icon looks like. It is good to keep in mind that if you do buy additional emoji apps you won’t get more, different, or better emoji, so caveat emptor” my friends.
The Verdict
emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard is a good app. When it arrived on the scene it was pretty early on in the emoji enabling days. emoji iEmoji icons – get smiley, emoticon keyboard does exactly what it is supposed to do and it does it well. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch it is almost required that you enable emoji. Go ahead and do it, I won’t tell.
Our Rating
emoji iEmoji icons - get smiley, emoticon keyboard
- Developer: emoji iEmoji icons - get smiley, emoticon keyboard
- Category: Social Networking
- Released: 2009-03-19
(currently 1.1)
(currently 0.99)
I’ve never understood this app’s top rankings on the paid lists when there are free alternatives that do the same thing. Is the app store so huge that people don’t even bother searching or reading blogs like this one, but they just take whatever Apple shoves at them in the top lists?
Sorry, don’t remember the name right now but I got a free app whose primary advertised function is to translate numerals into text, like on a check for those of you old enough to remember those. So a pretty obscure function, but it also has the ability to enable the emoji keyboard selection in settings. This was back in the day when there was some concern about whether Apple would even allow such emoji enabling apps in the app store. Now this all appears to have changed, of course, and to the benefit of emoji Emoji icons. Curious.
Anyway, once you have emoji enabled you can simply delete the app that accomplished that and save your memory. Mine has remained enabled through all updates to the current OS.
You are correct. No need to keep the emoji enablers installed unless for some reason you need the other built stuff.
I just searched for “emoji” in the App Store, and the first one listed was free. It showed ads for the minute or so it took to activate, then I activated the emoji keyboard in Settings and deleted it. Easy, and free.
Cool. If people work at it even just a teeny tiny bit, deals can be had in the app store.
I have to give the developers of this emoji app props, they captured lightening in the bottle being the second app to enable emoji.
To enable Emoji for FREE, you could also do this: (works 100%)
1. Download Todew Lite on the App Store
2. Create a task called “Emoji” (without quotes).
3. Follow on-screen instructions.