Your iPhone Just Got Dozens of New Emoji

As promised, Apple released its much-anticipated iOS 10 software update on Tuesday, and it's packed with dozens of badass new features that'll make your old iPhone or iPad feel new again. But just admit it, people: the one new feature you're most excited about is the fresh batch of new emoji characters.

Along with several other big updates to the Messages app, iOS 10 brings dozens of new and redesigned emoji to your iPhone keyboard such as the long-absent rainbow flag, single parent familiesseveral new emoji options to promote gender equality in professions (i.e. police officer, firefighter, etc.) as well as sports (i.e. cyclist, basketball player, and more), and even a new water gun emoji that replaces the longtime gun emoji Apple no longer supports. Most of the updates, however, appear to be existing characters redesigned with a fresh coat of that pale yellow paint -- with 37 completely new characters and 632 emoji updates in total, according to Emojipedia.org.

click to play video

Granted, this batch of emoji might not be as exciting as the massive new emoji release via the iOS 9.1 update last October, but like iOS 10 in general, it certainly brings improvements to your iPhone. Add that to the many flashy new Messages app features like crazy message animation options/special effects, an App Store just for adding new Messages abilities, and the ability to send emoji that appear three times bigger, and well, it might just be enough to hold you over until the next emoji update. Keyword: might. 

As Emojipedia points out, the next update -- potentially later this year -- will likely include the 72 all-new emoji characters approved by the Unicode Consortium for Unicode Version 9.0, including bacon, pancakes, face palm, shrug, avocado, cucumber, and baguette emoji -- to name a few. An "Impatiently Tapping Foot" emoji would certainly come in handy right now.

Sign up here for our daily Thrillist email, and get your fix of the best in food/drink/fun.

Tony Merevick is Cities News Editor at Thrillist and particularly enjoys the new rainbow flag emoji. Send news tips to news@thrillist.com and follow him on Twitter @tonymerevick.