Move over, smiley face: New religious emojis on the way

[hrmjustin]

Heather Adams

(RNS) In addition to smiley faces, high heels and frogs, Unicode is rolling out a new batch of 250 emojis, among them a set of religious icons.

Unicode is the character coding system that gives a unique number for every character, allowing different companies to have access and the support for universal emojis.

The new emojis will feature three types of crosses, the dove of peace and the Om symbol, a mystical Sanskrit sound of Hindu origin. They will join an emoji cast that includes an angel and a devil.

The new emojis will be available with the Unicode 7.0 update. But that doesn’t mean users will have them right away. Companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Google have to decide which emojis they want and how they’ll look before customers have the option to use them.

http://www.religionnews.com/2014/07/11/move-smiley-face-new-religious-emojis-way/