Apple kickstarted an industry-wide trend once again when it launched Animoji with the iPhone X in 2017. Since then, many companies have come up with their own versions of animated emojis to counter Apple’s neat little trick. This includes Samsung’s AR Emoji (Augmented Reality Emoji) as well, although the company claims it’s not a copy of Apple’s Animoji.
Though AR Emoji made its debut on the Galaxy S9/S9+, it soon turned into a staple feature on Galaxy devices across price points. The Korean company has been steadily adding more options and making improvements to AR Emoji with the launch of every new flagship device. Accordingly, the Galaxy S10 lineup also introduced new features like Mask mode, Mini motion, Live figure, and more. The latest version also brings updated editing tools that help users to customize their emoji avatars to reflect their overall personality better.
As of now, AR Emoji is mostly limited to expressing yourself in messaging apps and on social media, but the team behind the feature has bigger plans for it. In a Samsung Newsroom interview, the Galaxy S10 AR Emoji team shared their thoughts, among other things, about new use cases for emoji avatars. This includes new capabilities such as being able to use your avatars in games, integrating AR Emoji into Bixby to turn the former into a “personified visual assistant,” etc. The Bixby integration, for example, could involve an AR Emoji avatar holding an umbrella for weather updates to make it more personal and visual.
Samsung is also working to incorporate more popular characters, new decorative tools, add-ons like make-up and tattoos, inclusive options like artificial limbs, and more into AR Emoji. It is not yet clear when these features will make it to the market.
The team believes AR Emoji will help users to familiarize and get used to AR technology. As virtual-reality products and services continue to grow, they see AR Emoji avatars as the best way to represent yourself in the virtual space.
