How Long New Emoji Take to Reach Your Phone, Platform by Platform

About six months, if you carry an iPhone or a Galaxy. By the dated records behind our emoji update pages, Apple shipped every Emoji release from 14.0 to 17.0 between 175 and 202 days after Unicode published it, always in a March update. Samsung and WhatsApp were slightly quicker with Emoji 17.0, at 169 and 178 days. Windows took 352. Below is every figure, how we got it, and where our record runs out.

Every delay here is simple subtraction: the day a vendor's public release first put a new Emoji version on its keyboard, minus the day Unicode released that version. Beta builds do not count. The Unicode dates are the same ones our Unicode versions pages publish, so nothing in this post can disagree with them.

Every delay we have on record, in days

These are all twelve vendor releases in our dataset that implemented a numbered Emoji version. Read each line as: Emoji version (Unicode release date), then the vendor release, its date, and the gap.

• Emoji 10.0 (20 June 2017): iOS 11.1, 31 October 2017, 133 days
• Emoji 11.0 (5 June 2018): iOS 12.1, 30 October 2018, 147 days
• Emoji 12.1 (29 October 2019): iOS 13.2, 28 October 2019, minus 1 day (237 days after Emoji 12.0, which shipped in the same update)
• Emoji 13.0 (10 March 2020): iOS 14.2, 5 November 2020, 240 days
• Emoji 14.0 (14 September 2021): iOS 15.4, 14 March 2022, 181 days
• Emoji 15.0 (13 September 2022): iOS 16.4, 27 March 2023, 195 days
• Emoji 15.1 (12 September 2023): iOS 17.4, 5 March 2024, 175 days
• Emoji 16.0 (10 September 2024): iOS 18.4, 31 March 2025, 202 days
• Emoji 17.0 (9 September 2025): One UI 8.5, 25 February 2026, 169 days
• Emoji 17.0: WhatsApp 2.26.8.72 for Android, 6 March 2026, 178 days
• Emoji 17.0: iOS 26.4, 24 March 2026, 196 days
• Emoji 17.0: Windows 11 Release Preview update, 27 August 2026, 352 days

Two things jump out. Apple is the only vendor with a long run of dates, nine releases since 2017. And Emoji 17.0 is the only version where we can line four vendors up against the same starting gun.

Apple moved from October to March when Unicode moved to September

Apple's delay looks erratic until you put the Unicode dates next to it. Emoji 10.0 and 11.0 were released in June, and Apple shipped them in the first point update of that autumn's iOS (11.1, then 12.1), 133 and 147 days later.

Then Unicode's calendar changed. Every version from 14.0 onward came out in September, and Apple's emoji update slid to the following March, always in the x.4 release. Five years in a row: iOS 15.4 on 14 March, 16.4 on 27 March, 17.4 on 5 March, 18.4 on 31 March, and 26.4 on 24 March.

That is a window of 26 days across five years. For an iPhone owner the useful question is not which month new emoji arrive. It is which week of March.

The longest Apple wait in our record is Emoji 13.0 at 240 days. It was a March 2020 release that did not reach iPhones until iOS 14.2 in November, which is what happens when a spring Unicode release misses the autumn iOS cycle and has to wait for a point update.

The one release that landed a day early

iOS 13.2 is dated 28 October 2019, and the Emoji 12.1 release date in our Unicode table is 29 October. On paper Apple shipped a day before Unicode did. The same update also carried Emoji 12.0, which had been out since 5 March, so 237 days is the honest measure of how long iPhone owners waited for that batch. We show the minus one rather than quietly dropping it, because a dataset that hides its odd rows is harder to trust.

Samsung ties emoji to a new Galaxy, not to a date

Samsung's only dated release in our record is One UI 8.5. It arrived with the Galaxy S26 series on 25 February 2026, which made Samsung the first of the four to ship Emoji 17.0, at 169 days.

That number flatters most Samsung owners. The broader rollout began on 25 March 2026, starting with the Galaxy A37 5G and A57 5G, which is 197 days after Unicode 17.0. If you own a mid-range or older Galaxy, your wait was closer to Apple's than to the headline figure.

The practical lesson: on Samsung, the emoji update rides on whichever One UI version launches with the next flagship. We have one release to go on, so we are not going to call it a schedule. It is a dependency, and it means Samsung's pace for any given version depends on a hardware calendar Unicode never sees. Our Samsung emoji guide covers how those designs differ once they land.

WhatsApp is the one update that ignores how old your phone is

WhatsApp began rolling out version 2.26.8.72 for Android on 6 March 2026, 178 days after Emoji 17.0. That put it between Samsung and Apple.

The interesting part is not the number. WhatsApp carries its own emoji font inside the app, so it does not need an operating system update at all. An Android phone that stopped getting system releases years ago still received Emoji 17.0 artwork inside WhatsApp the day the app updated from the Play Store. For anyone on old hardware, it is the shortest route to new emoji, and it is why emoji inside the app often look different from the same phone's keyboard. Our WhatsApp emoji page shows its designs.

One warning about headline counts. For the same Emoji 17.0 set, WhatsApp announced 143 new designs, Samsung 133, and Apple and Microsoft 163 each. The underlying characters are identical. What differs is whether a skin tone variant is counted as a separate addition, so the totals tell you about each company's counting rules rather than about what you gained.

Windows takes almost a year, and the version number won't tell you

Microsoft reached Emoji 17.0 on 27 August 2026 through a Windows 11 Release Preview update, 352 days after Unicode. It first appeared ten days earlier, on 17 August, in Insider build 26340.9212, but Insider builds are betas and do not count toward the delay.

Two details make Windows awkward to reason about. The emoji arrived before the 26H2 feature update they are associated with, through a servicing update. So a fully patched machine can have emoji that a machine on a nominally newer version lacks, and checking the Windows version number is a poor test. Run an update instead, or test the browser directly.

The same update also made Microsoft's 3D Fluent designs the default in places that used to show the flat set, which most people noticed far more than 13 new characters.

Google is the platform we cannot time yet

There is no dated Pixel or Android shipping record in our dataset for any numbered Emoji version. That is a real gap, and it is the biggest one.

What we can document is the font side. Emojipedia reported on 16 September 2026, in an article titled "Classic Noto Color Emoji Lives On as Google Debuts Emoji 18.0 Support", that Google had updated its Noto Color Emoji fonts with Emoji 18.0 designs, and the releases page of Google's googlefonts/noto-emoji repository on GitHub shows a "Unicode 18.0" release tagged 24 September 2026, eight days after Unicode. No other vendor in our data comes close to that.

But a font file is not a phone. Pixel 11 now defaults to Google's Noto 3D set, and in the same Emojipedia article the author wrote that it was not known when that set would get Emoji 18.0 on Pixel devices (both sources checked 22 October 2026). Google drawing the art first and Google phones showing it first are two separate claims, and only the first is supported.

Artwork sets move first, so we check them

Before a new emoji reaches a keyboard, its artwork usually shows up in a published font or image set that developers use. Our tracker script asks eight such sets for all 19 Emoji 18.0 code points (9 new emoji plus skin tone versions of the two thumb signs), after first confirming each set still serves an old control emoji, so a broken link can never read as "not drawn yet".

Our first check ran on 19 October 2026, 33 days after Unicode 18.0:

• Drawing all 19: Google Noto through the Google Fonts image CDN, the Noto 2D source files, the Noto 3D source files, and OpenMoji.
• Drawing none: jdecked Twemoji, Microsoft Fluent, and the emoji-datasource packages of Apple and Facebook artwork, both still on version 16.0.0.

Be careful with the "first seen" dates on the Emoji 18.0 rollout tracker. They read 19 October because that was our first check, not because the art appeared that day. The script only ever moves a first-seen date earlier, so later checks can tighten the record but never inflate it.

The Apple package is a lagging signal, not a leading one. It packages Apple's designs after Apple ships them, and at 16.0.0 it does not even have Emoji 17.0, which iPhones got in March.

Same pace for Emoji 18.0: arithmetic, not a forecast

Emoji 18.0 was released on 16 September 2026. If each vendor took exactly as long as it did for Emoji 17.0, these are the dates you would get:

• Samsung: 169 days, so 4 March 2027
• WhatsApp: 178 days, so 13 March 2027
• Apple: 196 days, so 31 March 2027
• Windows: 352 days, so 3 September 2027
• Pixel: no Emoji 17.0 record, so no figure

None of this is a prediction. Our records hold no announced date from any vendor, and as of our platform check on 19 October 2026 none of the five had shipped Emoji 18.0. Samsung's date hangs on a phone launch we do not know. Apple's five-year March habit makes its line the least speculative of the four, and it is still only a habit.

Emojipedia's own expectation, in the article cited above, was that the new emoji would reach Android and other Google platforms from early 2027, again based on how 17.0 went. That is their projection, labelled as such, not an announcement.

One release can't crown the fastest vendor

For Emoji 17.0 the order was Samsung, WhatsApp, Apple, Windows, with 183 days between first and last. It is tempting to call Samsung the fastest platform. Our data does not support that. Three of the four vendors appear exactly once, and Samsung's position came from a flagship launch that happened to fall in late February.

Apple is the only vendor where the record is long enough to see a pattern, and the pattern is boringly consistent. Everyone else needs another two or three releases before "usually" becomes an honest word. We would rather publish a short table that is right than a confident ranking built on one data point.

What our record does not cover

• Google Pixel and stock Android: no dated shipping release for any numbered Emoji version.
• Samsung, WhatsApp and Windows: Emoji 17.0 only.
• Apple before 2017: our vendor record starts at iOS 11.1 and Emoji 10.0.
• Emoji 13.1: our Unicode table does not list it separately, so it has no delay figure.
• Other apps: Telegram, X, Facebook, Discord and the rest are not tracked.

Note also that dates in a vendor's release record and dates in Unicode's are measured differently. A release "date" for iOS is the public software update, and rollouts like Samsung's or WhatsApp's are staged over weeks, so the first-day figure is the earliest anyone could have had it, not when you did. The release years themselves are their own minefield, which our 2026 new emoji roundup touches on from the other side.

How to see where your own device stands

The quickest test is in your browser. Our emoji support checker draws a character from every Emoji version and tells you the newest one your device renders. The rollout tracker runs the same kind of test against the 19 Emoji 18.0 code points specifically.

If a new emoji arrives as an empty rectangle, the sender's phone had it and yours does not. That is the gap in days this whole post is measuring, and our guide to emoji showing as a box walks through the fixes that are actually in your control. For the nine Emoji 18.0 characters themselves, our Emoji 18.0 breakdown covers what each one is, and new emojis and draft emojis list what is out and what is still being considered.