By Olga Grigorenko

In today's world, it is important to understand the need for applications, as they tend to bring people closer to each other. Be it a business to client relationship, or just a person to person communication - mobile applications have developed new and innovative methods to reel us all in and make us feel connected. Such is the importance of applications in today's world, that many companies tend to hire professionals (pop over to this website to find experts who could prove helpful) to develop applications for their business so that they get closer to their customers.

And with applications and social media come emojis! Emojis have become an integral part of our digital vernacular, peppering our text messages, emails, and social media accounts. What you may not know, however, is that not all emojis are created equal. While the same keyboard of emojis are available to both Android users and iPhone users, as this Android app development agency points out, the actual appearance of the various smilies differs for each brand.

The difference between the Android and iPhone interface is highlighted in particular when it comes to the mobile design of applications. The same app may have a different look when it is used on an iPhone compared to an Android. The same can be seen with emojis as well. When an Android user chooses to send a particular emoji along to their friend who has an iPhone, the friend actually sees an entirely different visual than the one that was actually sent. So what exactly do your Android emojis look like to iPhone users?

All emojis are approved and standardized by the Unicode Consortium, which ensures that every brand is working with the same emoji alphabet with no cross-platform miscommunication. Unicode does, however, leave room for interpretation of this emoji alphabet, allowing brands to design their emojis in slightly different ways. This is why Android users and iPhone users, while using the same set of emojis, actually see very different visuals of the same icons.

For some emojis, the differences between Android and iPhone are subtle; for others the differences are drastic. Here for example, is the "grimacing face" emoji as seen on iPhone (left) and Android (right).

Both are assigned to the same role but are visually designed in decidedly different ways - which seem to indicate two different emotions.

The "nail polish" emoji is another interesting case in which Apple and Google took different approaches to depicting the same symbol:

The iPhone "nail polish" emoji (left) has become synonymous with "girl power" and depicts an action as well as an item. The Android "nail polish" emoji on the other hand, is a more literal depiction of a product and visually reads as a universal icon.

To see variations within the two emoji languages, one can look to the vast number of sites and blogs that have put together side-by-side comparisons.

For Android users who would like to see these visual variations in real-time (and know exactly what their iPhone friends will be seeing on their screens), Android apps such as Emojily have been created for that exact purpose.

Available for free on the Google Play store, Emojily lets Android users enter in the emojis they want to send to an iPhone user and it displays them exactly how the iPhone recipient will see them. The odds are that your iPhone friends will get your Android emoji messages without any miscommunication, but if you want to take precautions or are simply curious, there is now an easy way to see what your Android emojis look like to iPhone users.