Before Unicode
The carrier sets
Emoji were a Japanese mobile phone feature for a decade before Unicode encoded them. These 1,346 characters are the originals, from the three carriers whose competing sets Unicode later unified into one standard.
- SoftBank1997469 characters, all unified into Unicode
- NTT DoCoMo1999244 characters, all unified into Unicode
- au by KDDI2000633 characters · 3 never made it into Unicode
Frequently asked questions
- What are carrier emoji?
- Before Unicode, Japanese mobile operators each shipped their own incompatible emoji sets. An emoji sent between two networks could arrive as the wrong picture or as nothing at all, and resolving that is why emoji were standardised.
- Which carriers had their own emoji?
- SoftBank, NTT DoCoMo and au by KDDI each ran their own set, the earliest from 1997.