Google’s 3D emoji glow-up puts Apple's to shame

For people who have trouble expressing themselves in words, emoji are digital Cyranos. Today, Google has given those word substitutes more weight with a new depth to its 4,000 emoji.

Called Noto 3D, Google said in its blog post announcement: “It’s the difference between a message received and a presence felt.”

The 3D-enhanced emoji are designed to have a “touch of physicality.”

An end to the Google v. Apple embarrassment

In a side by side comparison of some of the old emoji to the new, each beam of the rainbow pops, the octopus looks more beseeching and lifelike, and the sakura bears the essence and beauty of ephemeral spring.

While Yeats has already handled whether or not we can judge what others find attractive, there was a pretty universal repulsion to Android’s earliest emoji.

For a blip of time, the best you could hope for an Android device were some basic black and white images. Google didn’t truly support emoji until 2013 or, as it could be called, the beginning of the blob era. These misshapen creatures looked (mostly) happy, even when they had no face and yet somehow did sport a beanie while snowboarding. Blob life ended in 2017 when Google emoji began hewing closer to the Apple look.

You could say that the blob was a victim of beauty standards, but it also clarified communication between iOS and Android devices, where what an emoji looked like when sent vs. what it looked like when received could lead to sitcom levels of misunderstanding.

Now the Noto 3D look discernibly different from Apple’s emoji but are still recognizable. If anything, they are the yassified versions of their iOS counterparts.

Coming to a phone near you

While they might seem like a small change next to Google’s other announcements today, they’re likely the thing that will affect the most people.

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The emoji made their debut during The Android Show, and they will be available across all of Google eventually, though they come to Pixel phones first later this year.