Emoji explanation?

[The Governor]

I'm not bashing emoji here, nor do I need a definition of what it is.

Maybe I just don't get it. What is the big deal of having this in the 2.2 update. Not that I mind it in the update, but more so why is it being touted as of the more important features?

Take macrumors for example, of all the nice features of 2.2, why does the title say "Apple Releases iPhone 2.2 Firmware with Street View, Emoji and More"? Now I know that is just one person's words, but emoji seems to be one of the more advertised features in 2.2 along with street view.

One last question:

How many people will actually use this?

 

[andyblila]

Nobody outside of Japan.

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (16GB): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

Nobody outside of Japan.

Actually, not even those of us in Japan can use it.

Search the forum for details. I'd post a link to the thread, but I'm using my iPhone so I can't. No copy/paste, after all.

 

[The Governor]

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Actually, not even those of us in Japan can use it.

Why are you not able to use it?

 

[mkrishnan]

Why are you not able to use it?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/603964/

Anyway, this is like asking why American users would have a problem with having an IM client except it doesn't support AIM, MSN, or Google Talk, or having a keyboard for texting except it doesn't have R, L, T, I, U, or M on it.

Japanese customers use Emoji. It's been named repeatedly as one of the major barriers to iPhone adoption there.

 

[Pooshka]

What about us, Americans? Americons? Smileys? Emoticons?

 

[The Governor]

Anyway, this is like asking why American users would have a problem with having an IM client except it doesn't support AIM, MSN, or Google Talk, or having a keyboard for texting except it doesn't have R, L, T, I, U, or M on it.

Not having emoji is the same as me having a keyboard without the R, L, T, I, U, or M on it?

That's a little bit of an outlandish analogy, no?

I mean, the way you depicted it, Japanese customers are not able to fully communicate without emoji icons? I know that if I didn't have those keys on the keyboard then that would be the case for me, but not having emoji icons...

I understand that it is a unique aspect of Japan's culture, but I don't see your correlation of not having it would be the same if I were missing a bunch of keys.

 

[Small White Car]

Not having emoji is the same as me having a keyboard without the R, L, T, I, U, or M on it?

That's a little bit of an outlandish analogy, no?

I mean, the way you depicted it, Japanese customers are not able to fully communicate without emoji icons?

It's called 'exaggeration.'

It's hardly a cause for confusion. I get what he means even though it's not a literal analogy. If told you that I was "so hungry I could eat a horse" would you not know what I meant?

 

[rush0]

I wouldn't compare it to removing letters, I would say...imagine if you couldn't curse on your iphone, Its a part of their culture that they've grown used to, I think they deserve. Hell, even I want emoji now.

 

[mavis]

I wouldn't compare it to removing letters, I would say...imagine if you couldn't curse on your iphone, Its a part of their culture that they've grown used to, I think they deserve. Hell, even I want emoji now.

Actually, I think the removing letters analogy is fairly accurate. Given that Japanese people use emoji to convey meaning as much as (and sometimes more so than) text, depriving them of emoji is pretty major. Apple should've been aware of that before the iPhone 3G was launched, and since it launched without that ability, response has been somewhat tepid.

 

[daisuke07]

Why are you not able to use it?

u needa jap sim

 

[firewood]

I mean, the way you depicted it, Japanese customers are not able to fully communicate without emoji icons?

Imagine a US keyboard with a draconian autocorrect that could not be turned off, and that simply would not allow the 100 most commonly used abbreviations (LOL, OMG, ROTFLMAO, etc. to be entered by any means. Imagine when reading texts/emails, that these abbreviations would not be displayed (just blanks or dots in their place). Most users, even though they could spell things out in complete words (please smile at this attempt at humor here because I can't type in a picture of a face, or anything like , would be extremely annoyed.

.

 

[mavis]

u needa jap sim

No, that's wrong. I have a SoftBank sim, but emoji doesn't work in email for me either - only in SMS.

 

[icantbelieveit]

I can't actually believe an entire country uses smiley faces/little pictures to communicate! Its like a childrens book that has a picture of a cat rather than the cat! It just sounds so wierd and childish that there are adults who cant possibly use a phone unless they an send an icon to explain what they mean rather than just type it- very bizzare!

And i wish apple wouldnt waste their time with things such as street view and emoji (especially, as it seems, they cant even implement it right!).

 

[mmmdreg]

I can't actually believe an entire country uses smiley faces/little pictures to communicate! Its like a childrens book that has a picture of a cat rather than the cat! It just sounds so wierd and childish that there are adults who cant possibly use a phone unless they an send an icon to explain what they mean rather than just type it- very bizzare!

And i wish apple wouldnt waste their time with things such as street view and emoji (especially, as it seems, they cant even implement it right!).

Stop being so culturally shallow and go and experience life in the rest of the world.

 

[The Governor]

It's called 'exaggeration.'

It's hardly a cause for confusion. I get what he means even though it's not a literal analogy. If told you that I was "so hungry I could eat a horse" would you not know what I meant?

Oh, is that what it is called. Thanks for taking your time and clarifying.

Well, to be honest I didn't get his analogy, literally or figuratively hence me asking to clarify. I assumed he was exaggerating, hence my "outlandish analogy" remark. But, how would I know? I would of been shocked if that was a honest analogy, but would of accepted it to be correct....along with maybe some more reading on the subject

I could read numerous articles on the implementation of emoji, but the fact remains It is part of Japan's culture that I wouldn't grasp until I experienced it myself.

As far as your "hungry as a horse" analogy, yes I would know what you meant, but I've heard that many times before. I have never heard: Not having emoji is the same as me having a keyboard without the R, L, T, I, U, or M on it

One last question

I hate to be ignorant here, but is emoji only used in Japan, or is it also popular in other asian countries?

 

[windowpain]

I can't actually believe an entire country uses smiley faces/little pictures to communicate!.. (snip) ..very bizzare!

 

[mkrishnan]

Actually, I think the removing letters analogy is fairly accurate....

Yeah, that's really the end of the story. It's a major feature to them. A market is a market... I mean, yes, for instance, you could say it's petty that Japanese customers really aren't happy with a phone unless it has emoji. You could say that it's really petty that Japanese users don't like a phone unless they can hang a charm off it. You could say it's ridiculous that Americans don't like a phone unless it has MMS, even if they can e-mail pictures with it.

What difference does any of it make?

Unless a company like Apple has the marketing or cool power to overcome these objections and make people change their definition of what they want (as they did in the US with MMS but did not in Japan with the emoji or even the charm slot) then a market is a market, and the product will not sell unless it gives people what they want.

 

[skubish]

I can't actually believe an entire country uses smiley faces/little pictures to communicate! Its like a childrens book that has a picture of a cat rather than the cat! It just sounds so wierd and childish that there are adults who cant possibly use a phone unless they an send an icon to explain what they mean rather than just type it- very bizzare!

And i wish apple wouldnt waste their time with things such as street view and emoji (especially, as it seems, they cant even implement it right!).

All emoji are is shortcuts. We do the same in English.
Such things are ne1, brb, lol, rofl, bff, etc. If you took a moment to understand the Japanese language you would see that it is not easy to do shortcuts and I even find typing Japanese to be clunky.

 

[kas23]

Yeah, that's really the end of the story. It's a major feature to them. A market is a market... I mean, yes, for instance, you could say it's petty that Japanese customers really aren't happy with a phone unless it has emoji. You could say that it's really petty that Japanese users don't like a phone unless they can hang a charm off it. You could say it's ridiculous that Americans don't like a phone unless it has MMS, even if they can e-mail pictures with it.

What difference does any of it make?

Unless a company like Apple has the marketing or cool power to overcome these objections and make people change their definition of what they want (as they did in the US with MMS but did not in Japan with the emoji or even the charm slot) then a market is a market, and the product will not sell unless it gives people what they want.

Let's get to the real reason emoji were added: money. I don't think Steve Jobs said to himself: "Oh no!, Japanese people can't communicate with each other now, better add emoji!" Fact is, the iPhone is failing in the Japanese market. Jobs doesn't want it to be a failure, so he adds emoji. Steve Jobs may be culturally sensitive, but only culturally sensitive enough to know what it takes to make yen.

There are many people who are having a hard time communicating without MMS. However, these people are still buying the iPhone - in droves! So, as a result, no MMS...yet.

I'm just pissed that I don't get emoji!

 

[mkrishnan]

Yes, it's absolutely about money. No disagreement.

I'm just pissed that I don't get emoji!

I would totally use it if we had it here... My last gf used Google Talk using their Windows client, and she claimed (she was supposedly once upon a time a sysadmin but she seemed to know about as much about computers as my cat knows about differential calculus ) that it didn't have any support for emoticons. And considering she would sometimes randomly assault me (good riddance ) with IM tirades about how much she hated work without warning while I was eating dinner , IMing with her without emoticons was ... brutal.

So SMS would be better with emoticons too.

 

[kas23]

Yes, it's absolutely about money. No disagreement.



I would totally use it if we had it here... My last gf used Google Talk using their Windows client, and she claimed (she was supposedly once upon a time a sysadmin but she seemed to know about as much about computers as my cat knows about differential calculus ) that it didn't have any support for emoticons. And considering she would sometimes randomly assault me (good riddance ) with IM tirades about how much she hated work without warning while I was eating dinner , IMing with her without emoticons was ... brutal.

So SMS would be better with emoticons too.

I know. Imagine your post without the emoticons. I wouldn't know what the heck you were trying to say!

 

[mkrishnan]

I know. Imagine your post without the emoticons. I wouldn't know what the heck you were trying to say!

It doesn't help that I'm a psycho.

But it's worse for the Japanese than for Americans. Japanese is a much more high-context language than English. Without subtle verbal aspects (change of tone, rhythm, etc) and non-verbal aspects of communication, it's much harder to communicate clearly in Japanese than it is in English. Think about the fact that a Japanese person and an English speaker can communicate essentially the same set of things -- there's not much you can get across in one language and not the other -- and yet English has ... what, like six times as many different words as Japanese?

 

[kas23]

LOL! I'm surprised there hasn't been a reference about buying used panties from vending machines yet....

 

[jarofclay73]

I think Americans should get Emoji too! If this is why we're not getting push notifications, cut & paste, etc. now because of Emoji, they should just unlock that feature for ALL countries!