Daily Technology
·19/12/2025
Google's latest Android 16 QPR3 beta update for Pixel phones gives the emoji set a clear facelift. The new look moves the tiny pictures a step closer to the versions Apple shows on iOS, especially for faces, animals and everyday objects.
The clearest changes appear on face emojis - Melting Face, Face Exhaling, Nauseated Face, Cold Face besides Loudly Crying Face. Angles shift, features shrink plus extra details vanish. Loudly Crying Face now has a smaller mouth matching Apple's style. Cold Face drops its snowflakes for a cleaner, iOS-like finish. Raccoon or Flashlight receive the same treatment gaining shapes and colours that echo Apple's art.
When every phone shows the same face, messages lose less meaning in translation. People who switch from iPhones or Samsung handsets no longer puzzle over mismatched grins or tears. The update keeps the official emoji names next to Unicode code points intact - the words attached to each picture stay the same. Popular icons now look current without breaking old conversations.
Anyone with a Pixel enrolled in the Android 16 QPR3 beta sees the new icons this day. Side-by-side shots of a QPR3 device and a phone still on QPR2 prove the swap is live. Early testers report flaws before the code reaches millions letting Google fix errors while they are small.
The update does not yet add Unicode 17.0 symbols like Distorted Face, Orca or Trombone, but it lays the groundwork for them. By borrowing Apple's visual grammar, Google joins the wider push for one emoji language that works on every screen.
Google's choice to mirror Apple's emoji in Android 16 QPR3 is a quiet but deliberate step toward one shared visual vocabulary. For tech minded users between 25 as well as 45, the result is a message thread that looks the same whether it lands on a Pixel or an iPhone.









