Texting, however, leaves a little to be desired. The conversations are threaded, which is all well and good, but there’s no MMS anywhere to be found. There aren’t even emoticons anywhere either, so we all send ASCII smileys back and forth: “:)” “:(” “;-)” “:-D” “X-[" and so on.

Japan leapfrogged us on this one. Evidently most Japanese cell phones come with Emoji, which is a reserved set of the Unicode character space exclusively for emoticons!

Well, it turns out that the iPhone has Emoji as well, but they're locked away and unavailable, reserved only for Japanese users. Many people have discovered this, and provided us with ways to unlock these Emoji for non-Japanese iPhones. For example, the app "Spell Number- Emoji for Free" doesn't really do anything I would ever need, but if you enter in the string "9876543.21" it unlocks your Emoji settings. Follow the directions in its App Store description to enable your Emoji, and off you go.

The main reason I'm posting this article is because I was really amazed by the expressiveness of the character set, and how you can compose entire stories in them. I had a furious Emoji exchange over iPhone with a few friends last night, and here are the highlights.  Credit to Wil, Bobert, and Tara who maybe I'll meet someday.

Trainspotting

New parents love everything about their babies

Do not stand on wrong side of elephant

A crafty monkey capitalizes on filming an overdose

An accident followed by a poor decision

One view of America

One view of China, Korea, Japan

Careful what you eat

Consider asking first

I want to believe

My attempt at a Memento Mori

Getting on the Wall of Bravery at Orochon Ramen in LA

But I want a hamburger