Hate Android Oreo's new emoji? You may be able to bring the blobs back in a future Android release (
Android Oreo's emoji are certainly... controversial. While our poll on the matter showed people prefer the new designs, and our very own Victor H. called the old ones "terrible," those opinions are clearly wrong and blobs are the superior method of pictorial communication.So here's a piece of good news for all the people out there who share this opinion: Google may be considering giving users the option to choose their own emoji set. Hooray!
The news comes from the issue tracker for Android, where a user-submitted request to enable choosing old versions of the emoji was met with a response reading: "We have deferred this to a future release, but leaving this open for now."
Or in other words: it's being considered, but don't get your hopes up too much. Still, we can only hope such a feature will be implemented as part of the Pixel 2 exclusive feature set (just like Google Assistant last year), as this would mean a speedy release, even if non-Pixel users will have to wait for a little while to get it. But again — this is just wishful thinking on our part.
The new emoji in Android 8.0 Oreo look like this
Of course, such a feature would have to come as part of a system-wide font switcher (emoji come in their own, special font built into Android), like the ones found on LG and Samsung devices, so even users who couldn't care less about what their emoji look like would reap the benefits.
Update, 09.15: So much for that, folks — the same Google employee who made the comment has now closed the ticket on the issue tracker with the message "We are not planning to support old emoji design. All new emoji will be designed and added to the latest font according to the latest Google emoji design." So ugly, boring gradients it is, then.
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