Gadget Techie

Emoji icons are Japanese picture characters of emoticons. If you have looked at the app store lately, you have probably run into quite a few of them either in the title of some apps or the reviews of apps.

Now before I continue, realize that ALL iPhones have the emoji characters built in. All the apps in the app store that claim to install emoji characters onto your phone are not being entirely truthful and making a quick buck off of you (if you buy their app). The characters are already in your phone, you just need to enable them.

The reason why emoji characters are not enabled on most iPhones is because they belong to 3 different Japanese operators including SoftBank Mobile (used to be called Vodafone). Therefore, phones that come through them (think of them as service providers such as AT&T) have emoji enabled by default. Because these characters technically belong to these Japanese operators, AT&T or any other company does not have the right to have them enabled and as such do not let you easily enable them.

That is where these apps in the app store come in. They are able to access the hidden settings in your phone and enable them. Once enabled, the app is not needed anymore and is basically useless. As of this writing, there is no free emoji app in the app store. However, there is a free emoji enabler app in the app store: Spell Numbers

“What is the difference”, you may ask. Well, this free app’s main purpose is to spell out numbers that you type. It’s secondary purpose is enabling emoji. It is basically the author of the app using a loop-hole to get around Apple’s crackdown on emoji enabling apps. Apple does not like apps who’s main and only purpose is to enable the emoji keyboard.

The developer of Spell Numbers tried to make sure that Apple would not catch on to it’s true purpose by requiring that you enter a certain unique number into the app in order for it to activate the emoji keyboard. The following are instructions on  how to get everything to work from start to finish:

1. Once you have downloaded the app, run it and type the following number: 91929394.59 and press Return on keyboard. Nothing should happen.
2. Close app and go to Settings
3. Press General
4. Press International
5. Press Keyboards
6. Select Japanese
7. Enable Emoji
8. Go to Notes or SMS and press the small globe key to the left of the spacebar on the keyboard. Now you should see them. You can swipe left and right to go through them.
9. You can delete the Spell Numbers app now

*If 91929394.59 does not work, go to the developer’s site at waterworld.com.hk and check to see if he changed the number. He normally refers to it as an Easter Egg in the app. If you have never heard of “Easter Egg” being referred to in software terms, check out this article in wikipedia.

That is it. You have just enabled the Emoji keyboard on your iPhone for free. You do not need to worry about it getting disabled when you backup or sync to iTunes. The only way it would get disabled would be if you were to wipe your iPhone and reformat it (do a clean reinstall of the iPhone OS).