Question :

How do I add ‘picture’ emoticons (like smileys 😉 ) to my iPhone and iPad texts and messages ?

Answer :

In iOS 5 and above, Apple has added a ‘picture language’ called “Emoji” which includes smileys, smiley-esques and mini clip-art like flags, fireworks, balloons, thumbs-up, etc.

Best of all : it’s FREE !

Activating Emoji on your iPhone/iPad  is simple :

1- make sure you are running the latest version of iOS (at least iOS 5 or newer)

2- Go to Settings –>General –> Keyboard –> International Keyboards –> Add New Keyboard…

3- choose “Emoji” from the list and exit the Settings-app

Done !

To use the Emoji-smileys in your texts and messages :

Whenever the keyboard appears, you will see a globe-key next to the left of the space-bar. If you tap the globe-key, you will get the emoticons-‘keyboard’. This is more like tabbed pages of emotions than a regular keyboard ; the tabs from left to right are :

globe-tab : return to a standard keyboard (so more of a key than a tab actually…)

clock-tab : here you can find all emoticons you’ve recently used

smiley-tab : the real emotions ; all smileys, faces, heart, hand signs, etc.

flower-tab : plants & animals

bell-tab : seasonal (like X-mas & Halloween),  party, communication tech, sports, clothing and food & drinks

car-tab : travel, transportation & flags

punctuation-tab : signs, zodiac signs, clock-times & trademarks

backspace-tab : ‘backward delete’-key to delete mistyped emoticons (so not an actual tab, but a key also)

Note that the Emoji-keyboard layout is not a regular keyboard layout, which means it does not include a space-bar or a return-key ; to use those you will have to (temporarily) switch back to your regular keyboard using the globe-key

FYI : this feature is not available for iOS4 ; if you are on a iPhone 3G and can not upgrade to iOS you should either stick with using text-based emoticons or buy, download & install one of the Emoji-apps that are available in the App Store.