Happy World Emoji Day! To celebrate, Apple is giving us a preview of some of the new emoji that you will be able to use later this year. The ideas for new emoji are considered and approved by the Unicode Consortium, and the new emoji in iOS 13 come from the Consortium's Emoji Version 12.0, approved earlier this year with 230 new additions, if you count all of the variations. The Consortium has general rules on what each emoji is supposed to look like, but each company has a lot of flexibility in the specific designs, which is why emoji can look different on iPhone, Android, your computer, etc. As always, the designers at Apple have done a really nice job with these. Here are some of the new emoji that you will be able to use on your iPhone later this year.
Holding hands has always been a good way to represent couples and relationships. This Fall, you will be able to select any combination of skin tone or gender, more than 75 possible combinations β including two people with a gender inclusive appearance (not yet previewed by Apple).
There are also many new disability-themed emoji, and Apple gets the credit for proposing these to the Unicode Consortium last year and helping to get them adopted. Here is an ear with a hearing aid, a deaf person, two kinds of wheelchairs, a prosthetic leg, a guide dog, a person with a cane, and a prosthetic arm:
There are five new animals coming in iOS 13, plus two guide dogs (one of which is shown above). Here is a sloth, a flamingo, an orangutan and a skunk. (Not pictured: the new otter.)
New food items being added include a waffle, felafel, butter, and garlic:
Other new items include a banjo, a person parachuting, a kite, a yo-yo, a yawning face, a one-piece swimsuit, a sari, and a safety vest:
Although iOS 13 will likely come out around September, you may have to wait a little longer to use these new emoji. Apple released new emoji in iOS 11.1 (October 31, 2017) and iOS 12.1 (October 30, 2018), so if the past is any indication, perhaps this year they will come out around Halloween in iOS 13.1.