How to get Android N’s new emoji on almost any Android phone

If you haven’t heard, Google released Android N Dev Preview 2, and in it were a lot of new cool things. One of those things was a new collection of emojis that will be coming as part of the Unicode 9.0 standard. But did you know you don’t have to have Android N to get those emojis right now?

All you need to do is have a compatible phone with at least Android 5.0 Lollipop and a custom recovery to flash .ZIP files. Here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll need to do:

1. Download this .ZIP file.
2. Boot into your phone’s custom recovery.
3. Create a backup of your system (not required, but highly recommended).
4. Install the .ZIP file by pressing “Install” and navigating to the folder where you stored it.
5. Reboot and find the new emoji waiting for you in your standard keyboard!

Note that even if your device meets the above requirements, it may not work. Most Samsung phones apparently won’t take kindly to it. That said, if you create a backup then giving it a try shouldn’t be too much trouble. Give it a go and let us know if you have success!

[via WonderHowTo]