? Smiling Face with Tear is close in concept, but in many ways, quite different. WeChat’s face which conveys the pain of tears hiding behind a smile in a way that no existing Unicode emoji does. The flexibility WeChat has to create and implement any emotion means that subtle cues can be conveyed in a way that can be more challenging than if a committee has to approve a concept, and have that implemented in subtly different ways on different devices. Image: WeChat designs / Emojipedia composite. Above: WeChat makes considerable use of props and hand gestures within the smiley set. While many of WeChat’s stickers closely resemble existing emojis, others are quite distinct, such as which appears to show legs as arms (?). Notably, WeChat makes strong use of props and hands within the smileys, which is less common in the standard Unicode set.
WeChat users can use both the WeChat sticker keyboard and the system-wide emoji keyboard interchangably. WeChat, on the other hand, can add a sticker when it wishes, as it controls the user experience end-to-end.Ībove: New designs on the WeChat sticker keyboard, including a cigar-free soldier.