Android emojis: how Google wants to simplify updates

The colleagues from XDA Developers noticed a change in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which could enable faster updates of fonts and thus also emojis. So far, an Android upgrade on your device is necessary when Unicode adopts new emojis if you want to use them. This means that users might have to wait a long time for exactly this update.

The background is, as XDA describes, that emojis are fonts stored in a directory that Android is only allowed to read from in regular operation. Write access is not allowed to the system, so there can be no easy updates to the fonts – and that's exactly what's necessary to get the new emojis. This means an official OTA update has to be released to update the folder and the fonts within.

Android: changes to fonts without OTA updates

The found code now states that exactly this could change. In the future, fonts and thus emojis are to be stored in a different location that can be accessed and written to without a whole system update and thus be upgraded without long waiting times.

9to5Google expects that Google Play Services, for example, will be responsible for such updates. At the same time, however, the site wishes that for example emoji packs could be installed, which can be offered by third-party vendors similar to Android launchers. It remains to be seen how much freedom Google will give its users here.

It is still unclear with which Android version the adaptations will be available to users. The proposed changes have not yet been committed to the existing source code, so that any adjustments are still possible. The update could also still be discarded completely.

Via: 9to5Mac Source: XDA Developers, AOSP