"Classic" Japanese emoji, pre-Apple[1], looked pretty crappy. Non-Japanese users had access to better-looking emoticons on ICQ, AOL, Yahoo and MSN (I particular

"Classic" Japanese emoji, pre-Apple[1], looked pretty crappy. Non-Japanese users had access to better-looking emoticons on ICQ, AOL, Yahoo and MSN (I particularly liked the MSN emoticons) but they were non-standard. In retrospect, iOS's decision to combine full-colour emoji with standard Unicode mappings was genius. [1] https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3639 https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3639