Enlarge / Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji. (credit: Emojipedia)

The Unicode Consortium has finalized and released version 16.0 of the Unicode standard, the elaborate character set that ensures that our phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices can all communicate and interoperate with each other. The update adds 5,185 new characters to the standard, bringing the total up to a whopping 154,998.

Of those 5,185 characters, the ones that will get the most attention are the eight new emoji characters, including a shovel, a fingerprint, a leafless tree, a radish (formally classified as "root vegetable"), a harp, a purple splat that evokes the '90s Nickelodeon logo, and a flag for the island of Sark. The standout, of course, is "face with bags under eyes," whose long-suffering thousand-yard stare perfectly encapsulates the era it has been born into. Per usual, Emojipedia has sample images that give you some idea of what these will look like when they're implemented by various operating systems, apps, and services.

Unicode 16.0 also adds support for seven new modern and historical scripts: the West African Garay alphabet; the Gurung Khema, Kirat Rai, Ol Onal, and Sunuwar scripts from Northeast India and Nepal; and historical Todhri and Tulu-Tigalari scripts from Albania and Southwest India, respectively.

According to a report from Korean tech outlet The Elec, Microsoft has contracted Samsung to supply micro OLED display panels for what is described as “next-generation mixed reality devices.”

Citing industry sources, the report maintains the order could reach into the “hundreds of thousands” of micro OLED displays, with such a Microsoft XR device reportedly slated to arrive as early as 2026.

Unlike Meta’s current line of Quest headsets, the alleged Microsoft headset will be used for “enjoying or watching content such as games or movies rather than the metaverse,” the report maintains (machine translated from Korean), potentially putting it in competition with Apple Vision Pro.

Since Microsoft’s abandonment of its WMR platform late last year and ongoing stagnation around its HoloLens AR platform, the company has mostly concentrated on smaller XR software projects.

In January 2024, the company released support for 3D and VR meetings in Mesh, its immersive chatting platform. The company later announced at its Build developer conference in May it was bringing Windows Volumetric apps to Quest.

Since the release of Vision Pro earlier this year however, competing—or at least preparing to compete—with Apple seems to be the order of the day.

Samsung and Google confirmed in July their forthcoming “XR platform” will be announced sometime this year. The ‘platform’, which is thought to be hardware built by Samsung and an Android XR operating system built by Google, was previously reportedly delayed in effort to better compete with Vision Pro.

Meta is also apparently looking to compete with Vision Pro, with a device reported to arrive sometime in 2027.

Thanks to Brad ‘SadlyItsBradley‘ Lynch for pointing us to the news.