All those who have been bothered by the fact that the iOS emojis that feature human faces come only in light skinned appearance will have a reason to be happy, as the new iOS update has brought a diversity of skin colours.
The release of the new IOS software updates and OS X, has come with a series of a diversified set of emojis for iPhones, iPads and Mac. The latest IOS software update, 8.3 was released to developers at the end of February but for the public has only been made available recently.
The new feature of emojis brings a new category of skin colors for the popular items, like faces and hands, which are meant to represent people. The small icons are extremely used in messages, Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp but they have been receiving a lot of critics from people, who were not content with the fact that there were only light skinned icons, apart from a few, and they felt as if they were being discriminated against.
The issue was so sensitive that even stand up comedians have mentioned in their shows the fact that there are no emojis for black people. The new update has brought more than 20 skin colour shades.
When drawing the line, there is a total of 300 brand new emojis that have come with the update.
People wanting to change the shade of the skin of an emoji icon on an Apple mobile device, they have to tap the icon and hold press.This will make a menu bar to appear which will allow you to choose from six different possibilities.
For Mac, different skin color emojis can be picked by holding pressed Control, Command and Space.
From the moment you choose your skin colour emoji, on either mobile devices or Mac, the devices will remember them as your main option, until you decide to change it again.
People should know, that the other icons, that are depicting animals, foods, objects and so on, have not been changed by this factor.
A petition that was uploaded last year on DoSomething.org, complained about the fact that emojis lack ethnic diversity and that out of over 800 emojis, there were just two human faces that appeared to look of a different colour, meaning a guy wearing a turban and one other which gives the impression of being Asian.The petition demanded for more racial diversity in emojis.
It appears that many people have been commenting on this issues on several sites, and one Chinese commenter stated that the emojis were so badly reproduced that yellow people looked like they had icterus. Another commenter was offended by the fact of how yellow ,yellow skinned people were depicted.
However, Apple’s response to the controversy was that they have specially picked up that specific yellow tone, as it is a neutral colour that doesn’t represent any ethnicity for the purpose of not creating discussions.
The new set of emojis, includes also a broader range of countries and national flags, such as Macau and Hong Kong.
The last update also brings new languages for Siri along with several bug fixes and enhancements of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Another new feature of the iOS update, includes Sprint Corp iPhone users who will manage to make Wi Fi calls which will not affect their monthly minutes.People using Sprint will be able to make calls and get covered in any place they have a Wi Fi connection, explained David Owen, Sprint’s senior vice-president of Product Development.
iPhone Sprint customers will receive a software update from the company that will allow them to make charge free Wi Fi calls from the moment their device is connected to a network or a hotspot.
Image Source: Okay Africa
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