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EmotiFun! Released: Apple Relaxing Policies on Emoji Enablers? [Update: Removed]

Wednesday February 11, 2009 7:44 am PST by Eric Slivka
EmotiFun! [App Store], a free application whose sole purpose is to enable the use of Emoji for non-Japanese iPhone users, has appeared in the App Store. Emoji, emoticons and pictorial characters popular in the Japanese instant messaging culture, were introduced to Japanese customers as part of the iPhone 2.2 Firmware update, but have required workarounds to be enabled for non-Japanese users.

Several applications released to the App Store, including Touch Dial Emoji [App Store] and Typing Genius [App Store], have included the ability to enable Emoji, but the functionality was included as part of larger applications with additional uses. Developers who attempted to release applications whose primary advertised function was to enable Emoji, such as Ars Technica's Freemoji, saw their applications rejected by Apple for their ability to modify settings outside of the applications' containers, a violation of the iPhone SDK.

Ars Technica recently interviewed Gary Fung, the developer of Typing Genius, who provided his perspective on the Emoji situation and how he has risked raising the ire of Apple by advertising his application's ability to enable Emoji, even going so far as to change the application's title to Typing Genius - Get Emoji.

Apple's acceptance of EmotiFun!, which apparently has made no effort to disguise its sole ability to enable Emoji, implies a loosening of restrictions on what changes an application is permitted to make to system settings, but whether this relaxation of policies will extend to iPhone features beyond Emoji remains to be seen.

Update: EmotiFun! has apparently been removed from the App Store, and it is unknown if and when it will return.
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tiggery2k3
Posted: 43 months ago
May I be the first to say this really works until the next firmware comes out...
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
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JohnH59
Posted: 43 months ago
Works great, as long as you are sending to another iPhone. Unfortunately, most of my friends and family don't have iPhones.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
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bigmc6000
Posted: 43 months ago

Works great, as long as you are sending to another iPhone. Unfortunately, most of my friends and family don't have iPhones.


It should work with e-mail as well (should)...

Scratch that - only works iPhone to iPhone e-mail or text. Eh well...
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
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elmimmo
Posted: 43 months ago
Rather useless, unless it is for private use on text that does not leave your iPod/iPhone.

There is a reason for limiting the use of emoji on mails generated from a softbank address. You are not actually embedding the icons, just entering unused character codes that softbank has reserved for use of their emoji. While the list of icons is 99% similar to that used by Docomo and AU, the tables of which character is used for what emoji are different per operator.

Applications/devices that are usually capable of displaying them, i.e swapping characters into icons (cell phones, gmail or yahoo mail on a desktop, etc) must know which table they have to use (or if they have to do the conversion at all). Sending it from a softbank e-mail address is quite a definitive hint (but you can already do so without this app).

So, sending texts with this characters-to-be-swapped-into-icons from a non-softbank address is quite useless, since the device does not know it contains emoji and hence must do the swapping (unless, that is, they read them on an iPhone/iPod, which will assume that those character codes are softbank emoji no matter where they come from; in fact the iPhone is quite lame at that it does not even use conversion tables of AU or KDDI, i.e. it only displays emoji that come from another softbank address [boooo!])

Edit: AU phones are actually not able to use conversion tables from other operators, but the operator itself is actually converting the contents of the e-mail before serving it to the phone. So if AU can do that, I guess it is Softbank who is to blame for iPhones not displaying other operators' emoji)
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stevearm
Posted: 43 months ago

Rather useless, unless it is for private use on text that does not leave your iPod/iPhone.

There is a reason for limiting the use of emoji on mails generated from a softbank address. You are not actually embedding the icons, just entering unused character codes that softbank has reserved for use of their emoji. While the list of icons is 99% similar to that used by Docomo and AU, the tables of which character is used for what emoji are different per operator.

Applications/devices that are usually capable of displaying them, i.e converting from one table to another (cell phones, gmail or yahoo mail on a desktop, etc) must know which table they have to use (or if they have to do the conversion at all). Sending it from a softbank e-mail address is quite a definitive hint (but you can already do so without this app).

So, sending texts with this characters-to-be-swapped-into-icons from a non-softbank address is quite useless, since no one is going to be able to read them (unless, that is, if it is an iPhone/iPod, which will assume that those unused character codes are softbank emoji no matter where they come from; in fact the iPhone is quite lame at that it does not even do the conversion for mails from AU or KDDI, i.e. it only displays emoji that come from another softbank address [boooo!])



We already knew that.
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elmimmo
Posted: 43 months ago

We already knew that.


Tell that to all those people complaining they could not SEND emoji from a non-softbank account. They actually cannot with this app either.
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born4sky
Posted: 43 months ago
Work Like a charm and it's free :)
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anti-microsoft
Posted: 43 months ago
The App Store isn't being run well... (although Apple should have enabled emoji from the start!)

Ams.
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chr1s60
Posted: 43 months ago

The App Store isn't being run well... (although Apple should have enabled emoji from the start!)

Ams.


I think the way Apple runs the App Store is continuing to get better. It seems like more and more things are starting to get approved and I believe we will eventually get to a point where there is very little that Apple will not approve. Of course Apple is not going to allow apps that mess with certain parts of the phone, but I think within the next 6 months or so we will even see Apple starting to allow things like web browsers nat based on Safari and new mail applications. These are the things iPhone users are wanting and though Apple has been holding back, eventually it will make sense for them to allow these types of applications.

As far as emoji goes, I don't think it is a big deal and that is why Apple isn't trying to keep it from being unlocked.
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bigmc6000
Posted: 43 months ago

Tell that to all those people complaining they could not SEND emoji from a non-softbank account. They actually cannot with this app either.


Umm, it works sending iPhone to iPhone regardless of service provider. I'm assuming you already knew that right?
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