Android Nougat offers more PC emojis, plus an avocado

Who needs words when you’ve got emojis, amirite? Good news: the world of emojis is now richer than ever with the all new Android 7.0 Nougat. Those weird but endearing blobs are now positively human characters, yellow is now just one of the many skin shades available, and the beloved fruit (or is it a vegetable?) that is avocado comes in the form of an emoji.

According to Emojipedia, we will see some significant changes in the emoji department with Android 7.0 Nougat. First is the elimination of the gender neutral look. Unicode recommends a gender-neutral appearance, and Google did exactly that on previous Android versions: we had jelly-bean-looking blobs with facial features, and there was simply no way of telling whether it was male or female.

As you can see, with Android Nougat, emojis that are supposed to be human characters are more human-looking. For instance, the cute blob with a police hat on previous versions is now a more clearly defined male police officer.

Although some may think it’s a shame that Google opted for gendered emojis this time around, it seems like Google has strategic plans for the future: back in July, Google proposed a new set of emojis that would subvert the gender norms associated within various emojis. This means that in the near future, we could see both male or female variants for each emoji.

Another substantial change brought by Nougat is the ability to change skin tones. This feature has been available on iOS for quite some time now, so it’s good to see Google following suit and supporting a more realistic depiction of humanity as well. Other major manufacturers should take note (I’m looking at you, Samsung).

Apart from these, there are quite a few completely new emojis that have been added. In fact, we see every emoji from Unicode 9.0 that was released back in June. These include some of our most cherished expressions, habits, and food: the idek shrug, the shameless selfie pose, and of course, the avocado.

You can see the full scope of changes on Emojipedia, but the rest are pretty standard. Google has streamlined some of the existing emojis to make them more consistent, and it also improved on some to make them look more realistic.

For instance, the new wine emoji that you see above is now much more wine-like. Cersei would be pleased.

What are your thoughts on these emojis? For those of you who’ve already received the Android Nougat update, how are these emojis treating you? Let us know by commenting below!