SMS emoticons?

[justfallapart]

Do keitais come with cute SMS emoticons like these? The ones pictured are from the email function on a keitai and I know the Japanese prefer the email function and don't really use SMS. I was just wondering if SMS had any neat emoticons like these available to use? Thank you for your time/help.

[yamanote]

Yes they do, but I believe they only show up if you send the SMS to another keitai. Otherwise, the recipient will only see an empty square.

[justfallapart]

That makes sense. Thank you for the help Yamanote ^^

[martindesu]

Only usually visible between certain phones. For example, my WX-T930 won't be able to send them to a Softbank or Docomo handset, due to a difference in encoding. AL9999 went into detail on this some time ago

[justfallapart]

Thanks martin, I'll search for the thread. It didn't turn up in my previous searches, so I posted the question.

[IonNuke]

I think the phones has a set for SB and a set for DCM. I thought I remember seeing that in a few of my docomos when I rifled through the emoji selection menu.

[martindesu]

Thanks martin, I'll search for the thread. It didn't turn up in my previous searches, so I posted the question.

No problem! It is a hard one to find

Docomo, Softbank and Chinese sharps all have the emoticons, but only Softbank and Docomo ones are encoded in the same way. The Chinese sharps use EF4A and not UTF-8, and just do not display on a keitai... as AL9999 said a few years ago

Here is AL9999's old post on the subject:

I now have to retract what I said above. I had thought SMS/MMS sent from my 8010C were working on iPhones, but after actually seeing my message on my dad's iPhone 3GS, I've realised they're actually not working. They were displaying as squares, while emoji sent from the iPhone would display as squares on my handset.

Why? After MMS tests to my PC email address, I realised it was because stupid, stupid, stupid Sharp decided they should use UTF-8 encoding allocations for the emoji that are different to SoftBank's ones. Whereas the sun emoji uses UTF-8 character E04A, on my phone (and presumably the other Chinese Sharps) it uses EF4A.

Why? If it's legal reasons or something I understand, but if it's just to encourage people onto the Chinese Sharps instead of another phone, that's underhanded indeed...

[justfallapart]

Thank you for finding it for me! I think I'll still use them even if they show up as squares on other people's phones... just so I can see them haha.