Archive for category emoji

iPhone Tip: Label Your Folders With Emoji

This iPhone tip was inspired by a similar one discovered by iPhone J.D. on how to use special glyph characters in iPhone folder names. Our tip takes it one step further, adding the cartoonish emoji to add a little color and graphics to your folder names. Combining emoji with words makes for a neat label, or you could just use the emoji alone. They also look sharp and detailed on the iPhone 4′s Retina Display screen.

To use emoji to label your folders, you must first have emoji (which are Japanese emoticons designed for cell phones) activated. See the next section for instructions on how to do this. Once activated, simple tap the globe icon on your keyboard until you see the emoji keyboard, and start labeling!

How to Enable Emoji

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A Free App That Activates Emoji on the iPhone

iPhone Emoji

iPhoneFreak has found another app for activating emoji, and this one is free. The app is Spell Number – Emoji for Free (free, iTunes link).

Download the app, and then follow these steps to activate the emoji:

Spell Number Activates Emoji

1. Launch the app and enter the number 9876543.21

2. Return to home screen.

3. Go to the iPhone Settings –> General –> Keyboard –> International –> Japanese.

4. Flip the tab for emoji to On.

5. Launch SMS, hit the compose button, hit the international keyboard button (it looks like a globe), and get yourself some emoji!

Spell Number – Emoji for Free is a free download in the iTunes App Store.

Typing Genius App Adds Emoji Functionality to Your iPhone

Emoji on the iPhone

The iPhone 2.2.1 software update broke the previous method of using an app called frostyplace to add emoji to your iPhone. Ars Technica has a close look at a new method, an app called Typing Genius ($0.99, iTunes link). Ars interviewed the developer, Gary Fung, about the how and why of the app.

Typing Genius App

Typing Genius is an app for iPhone users to practice their typing skills and measure and track their improvement over time. The ability to activate emoji was simply an add-on feature. Fung originally submitted a free application to that App Store that would activate emoji, but Apple rejected it. So Fung simply added the functionality to Typing Genius.

Links

Ars Technica: “Typing Genius defies Apple, introduces Emoji support

iTunes: Typing Genius – Get Emoji

How to Add Emoji to the iPhone

*2nd Update 8/15/2010 See our updated instructions on how to enable emoji on the iPhone*

*Update 2-7-2009* It appears iPhone Software 2.2.1 broke this method of adding emoji to the iPhone. Alternative methods are the apps Typing Genius – Get Emoji and Touch Dial Emoji.

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Emoji are cute little Japanese icons that can be sent in SMS text messages. They will appear to the receiver of the message if their phone is an iPhone with 2.2 software, or if their phone has support for emoji.

Up to this point, only users in Japan had access to them on the iPhone (that is, if you didn’t want to hack your iPhone). Now, if you download a $0.99 app called frostyplace, you too can add emoji to your iPhone. Here are step-by-step instructions:


How to Activate Emoji on iPhone

1. Download Frostyplace for 99 cents from the iTunes app store.

FrostyPlace iPhone app

2. Launch the frostyplace app.

3. Tap two or three stories (it doesn’t matter which). They will be in Japanese:

Tap Articles in FrostyPlace

4. Tap the second icon on the bottom right of the app. Then tap on two or three stories (again, doesn’t matter which):

Tap the Second Bottom Right Icon

5. Close the app.

6. Open the iPhone Settings.

iPhone Settings Button

7. Tap General:

Tap General in iPhone Settings

8. Scroll down and tap Keyboard:

Select Keyboard in General Settings

9. Tap International Keyboards at the bottom of the screen:

Tap International Keyboards

10. Scroll down and tap Japanese:

Tap the Japanese Tab

11. Slide the Emoji tab to On:

Emoji Tab on the iPhone

And that’s it. To use the emoji, open the SMS app and hit the Globe icon at the bottom of the screen:

iPhone SMS icon

Tap Globe in the SMS App

Emoji icons on iPhone

Note that there are 6 tabs for 6 sets of emoji, but there are multiple pages of icons for each set of emoji. Drag your finger right to left to view them all.

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