June 24th, 2009
How-to: Enable Emoji on your iPhone
I have to admit to having second thoughts about blogging about this.
No, it’s not some super-secret new piece of hardware that will get the attention of Apple legal, it’s a simple software hack that should have been in the iPhone OS from the beginning.
It gave me pause because it’s such a fun little hack that I didn’t want to publicize it and have Apple close the loophole. Oh well, here it goes.
Emoji is the Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons used in Japanese wireless messages and Web pages. It’s common in Japan, but Apple specifically excludes it from iPhones in the U.S.
You can enable Emoji for all applications on the iPhone by installing a free application called Spell Numbers from the App Store then following these instructions.
Once you do, you’ll see a new globe icon in the lower left of all keyboards on the iPhone that, when pressed, gives you access to 25 pages of Emoji icons like those pictured above. Tapping the globe again takes you back to the regular text keyboard.
Tip: Tom Hesser
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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