iEmoji review

Damien McFerran

We review iEmoji, a bank of emoticons for your Apple iPhone

Published on Sep 4, 2009

They say a picture paints a thousand words and those internet users who insist of posting ‘emoticons’ (that’s ‘emotional icons’, if you’re wondering) obviously subscribe to this adage.

These cute yet often irritating little icons are the new generation of the more basic, text-based versions – such as :) for a smiley face, for example.

However, an even more advanced breed of mobile phone-based icons – dubbed ‘Emoji’ – is currently sweeping Japan. They’re arguably more advanced that the emoticons used by western handsets and the iPhone is first mainstream telecommunications device available in this part of the world that supports them.

iEmoji is just one of many iPhone applications that unlocks support for the 461 different Emoji images currently available. Although it’s being distributed as an app, it’s actually a program that installs a Japanese keyboard within the phone that grants access to these colourful images.

Opening the app itself will merely present you with the complete catalogue of Emoji icons, divided into categories. Pushing the menu button at the bottom of the display opens up a list of options, such as the ability to tell a friend about the app, leave feedback with the developer and post a review on the App Store.

However, to actually install Emoji support you have to follow the instructions detailed in the ‘Help’ section. This involves dropping back to the iPhone’s settings menu and enabling the newly-installed Japanese keyboard.

This all sounds a bit scary but it’s actually pretty painless; once the keyboard is switched on, it manifests itself as a small globe icon that sits in the bottom left-hand corner of the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard – just next to the number/alphabet toggle button.

Tapping this opens up the Emoji keyboard, with the individual Emoji icons divided into their relevant categories (animals, faces, events, etc). Tap an icon and it appears in whatever you’re writing – be it an SMS message, a note or a comment on the App Store.

One area where it’s not possible to use Emoji is in emails, which is a bit of a disappointment but isn’t totally unexpected as the format is intended for mobile phones rather than computers.

Naturally, the caveat of all this icon-based fun is that you can only send Emoji to other handsets that support it – iPhones (even those without iEmoji installed) can display them but other western mobiles will just show a question mark where the Emoji should be.

When you’ve enabled support on your phone you can delete iEmoji; the app isn’t required once the Emoji keyboard has been installed. Also, if you find that you’d rather not have access to all of these images then you can simply switch off the keyboard support in the iPhone’s settings menu and your phone will revert to normal.

If you’re keen on allowing pretty little pictures to do your talking for you then this app will be worth every single penny of the 59p that the developer is asking for; however, those of you that shun the use of emoticons in text messages will probably be left wondering what all the fuss is about.