Smartphone emojis are getting a truncated update in 2021 with a total of 217 new symbols available for expression via mobile, email, and social media communication. The Unicode Consortium and Emojipedia, the organizations that classify and create emojis, recently shared details about its upcoming Emoji 13.1 update.

The update includes new emojis for Face Exhaling, Face in Clouds, Face with Spiral Eyes, Heart on Fire, Mending Heart, Woman with Beard, and Genter Neutral Person with Beard. Many of the gender and skin tone variants of the new emojis bring the character count up to 217. However, the coming class of emojis is rather small due to the current global pandemic.

Because the Unicode Consortium is a nonprofit organization, many of its volunteers are likely not able to put as much effort into developing new emojis as usual.

The Emoji 13.1 update may be available to web apps quickly, likely within a few weeks or months; however, due to major delays throughout 2020, many devices may not get the new emojis until new major OS updates release between January and October 2021. Notably, many devices makers have yet to implement the 2020 Emoji 13.0 update onto devices.