Here are some of the new Android emoji, and how they compare to iOS 9.1 [Gallery]

A couple of days ago we told you that Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP of Android at Google, announced on Twitter that new emoji recently approved from Unicode 7.0 and 8.0 are soon coming to Nexus devices (specifically, it looks like they should be rolling out starting sometime next week). If you’ve been wondering what these new emoji are going to look like, you’ve come to the right place…

First off, the unicorn, lion, and crab emoji were seen a couple of days ago in a tweet from Lockheimer. There are of course more emoji on the way, however, and below you’ll find a few of those (via Emojipedia). A lot of them look very similar to the ones made in Cupertino, but that’s not really surprising considering they’re supposed to be based on a universal standard.

These emojis, including the famed hot dog, taco, burrito, cheese, and more, are all from the set of characters that were approved with Unicode 8.0:

Additionally, previously-discovered characters found deep within the Google Hangouts app are likely to be introduced with the big emoji update next week. These have been approved since mid-2014 with Unicode 7.0, but have yet to be officially supported on Android:

There are a few more spare characters that have now been spotted in the source code of Hangouts as well, including those for the Vulcan salute, the middle finger, “Man in Business Suit Levitating,” spider, and more. Interestingly, there doesn’t yet seem to be any evidence of the diversity options seen on Apple’s emoji keyboard (although that doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing these with the new update). It’s also worth noting that this is definitely not a comprehensive list, and many more emoji than you can see here are likely to be included with next week’s update.

Lockheimer teased back in October that Google was working on the new emojis, but now it looks like they’re finally going to be released. Perhaps Google will be able to leverage this as a way to get “regular” users to install minor updates packing other fixes. This seems to be working for Apple, as the company’s software adoption numbers with iOS 9 are as good as ever.

The Google SVP of Android also confirmed on Twitter that this update is coming in the form of an update to the OS itself, not through Google Keyboard. Notably, manufacturers like Samsung and HTC often theme the emojis as well, so it’s really up in the air when you’ll get the emojis for non-Nexus users. Some OEMs have already implemented them.

Emojiedia founder Jeremy Burge compiled these images, and you can read more about Burge’s findings over at the Emojipedia blog. And of course be sure to check out Emojipedia for more information on the history of all of your favorite emojis and their appearance across platforms.