Which Phone Drew This?

Clues that give a design away

Start with the outline. OpenMoji draws a thick black line around almost everything, which no other set here does. Twemoji, the set X uses, is completely flat: solid colours, no gradients, very simple shapes. Apple's are the most detailed, with glossy highlights and fine shading. Google's Noto set is rounder and softer, with gentle gradients. Microsoft's Fluent artwork sits between flat and shaded. Samsung and WhatsApp both use soft shading on rounded shapes, so with those two, look closely at the eyes and the proportions.

Why one emoji has so many faces

Unicode decides that an emoji exists, gives it a name and a number, and publishes a reference picture, but it does not decide what it looks like on your phone. Each company draws its own, within the name's meaning. Usually the versions agree. Sometimes they do not: a face that reads as nervous in one set reads as happy in another, and the person you text sees their phone's version, not yours.

Where these pictures come from

Each round uses the vendor artwork our emoji pages already display: Apple's set, Google's Noto, Twemoji 14.0.2 for X, Microsoft's Fluent Emoji, OpenMoji, and Samsung and WhatsApp images extracted from their shipped fonts. A round only uses a company that has artwork for that emoji, and the options always include three other companies, so every round has exactly one right answer. The pool of 40 rounds changes every hour.

Which Phone Drew This questions