Google could update the Emojis through the Play Store in future versions of Android

The emojis They have changed the way we communicate, replacing words or phrases with a simple drawing that expresses some feeling, expression, action, animal, object, food, symbol, etc …

Given their popularity, they are constantly evolving, adding new emojis every year and operating systems redesigning every few versions their design to bring them up to date, just like Android 11 did. The problem is that sometimes Emojis update more than mobiles, and this is what Google wants to avoid.

Updatable emojis from Play Store

Nowadays, Emojis are updated through a system update, with what if Unicode Consortium launches a new version of the Emojis, we have to wait for a new version of the operating system and its update to reach mobile phones. This means that users can wait months to be able to use and see the new Emojis on their devices. That is if they are lucky enough to receive an update, since on average after two or three years mobile phones stop receiving updates, and therefore, there may come a time when your mobile does not recognize some emojis.

To avoid this it seems that Google wants to update the Emojis from the Play Store, and is that in the Android source code (AOSP) a couple of changes have been detected that refer to this future feature.

Currently, Emojis are stored in the directory / system / fonts, which as the name of the folder indicates is the system partition, so it is only read, it cannot be written unless you are root. But recent updates to the source code move the sources to / data / fonts / files.

Add / data / fonts / files directory:

The updated font files will be stored to / data / fonts / files and all application will read it for drawing text. Thus, / data / fonts / files needs to be readable by apps and only writable by system_server (and init).

Set up / data / fonts directory for updatable system fonts:

– / data / fonts / files The updated font files are placed in this directory. The files under this directory are readable by any apps. Only system_server can write font files to this directory.

– / data / fonts / config The font configuration used by systemserver is stored in this directory. Only systemserver can read / write this directory.

According to the source code comments, the updated font files will be stored in / data / fonts / files and all applications will be able to read those fonts, but not modify them either, which can only be done by the system_server (and init) process.

Everything indicates that Google is separating the text fonts and emojis from the system partition to be able to update them through the Play Store as it already does with other system components. So if Unicode launches new Emojis, they could reach all mobiles in a matter of a few days, and mobiles whose support ended years ago.

Via | XDA-Developers

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Google could update the Emojis through the Play Store in future versions of Android

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