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Video: See Apple Watch animated emoji and Companion app Home Screen rearranging in action

Here’s a couple of fun Apple Watch tidbits: for those wondering what the animated emoji look like that you can create on the Watch and send to your phones, we have been sent two examples … one of a smiley emoji and one of a ‘love’ emoji.

This feature was first shown in September as part of the Watch’s unveiling, although interestingly Apple did not show it again at the March Spring Forward event. Users can use touch to adjust the expressions and make ‘custom’ emojis to send to friends.

In addition, last week, we showed you detailed screenshots of the final Apple Watch companion app that we first revealed in January. Now, Hamza Sood has been able to fully simulate the app rearrangement view showing how users will be able to drag app icons around on their iPhone Home Screen to create their desired hexagonal layout of Watch apps for their wrists.

Note that it is also possible to do the same re-ordering on the Watch itself by long-pressing the app icons on the Home Screen, just like the iOS Home Screen on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

[tweet https://twitter.com/hamzasood/status/578312856942325761]

Apple Watch comes out on April 24th in nine countries. Consumers can preorder Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport or Apple Watch Edition from April 10th. Prices start at $349 for Sport model.

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Comments

  1. Gazoo Bee - 9 years ago

    Man those emojis are the f*cking UGLIEST things I have seen in a while. It’s embarrassing that Apple made something so crass IMO.

    Glad to know for sure that we can rearrange all the icons except the clock too. There are so many Apple apps on this thing I thought they were going to “steal” the first ring of apps as well, meaning you’d have to scroll off screen to get to what you want. At least they didn’t go that way.

    • rogifan - 9 years ago

      Haha only tech geeks would say that. Kids, especially ones into stickers and emoji will love it. Shows a whimsical side. If you want sterile go Android.

      • Gazoo Bee - 9 years ago

        Well, I like emojis and I use them all the time, but these ones are hideous IMO.

        I get why they are there. The ability to “say” a lot in a single character or image is obviously invaluable to a small communications device like the watch.

        My disagreement is only that the yellow ones can be ugly at times, and instead of thinking of a cool “Apple solution” for the fact that they look hideous when blown up to this size, Apple kind of doubled down on the ugly and just animated them as well. I just think that overall I would have expected a more innovative, elegant, and pleasing solution to the problem of using emojis on the watch. These images are undeniably tacky and poorly done.

        To me, this is yet another of the many examples lately of Apple kow-towing to what the masses want, instead of giving them what they need. It’s feels to me like Apple is on a “popularity quest” lately, which kind of fits with the personal demeanour of their new CEO.

        A good example is the fake gold painted on their products now. It’s there because people WANT it, not because it’s GOOD. Steve Jobs would no doubt have said “I don’t care if people want it, it’s ugly.” Tim Cook on the other hand seems to be king of giving the people what they want. If they want ugly gold laptops, he will give it to them.

      • o0smoothies0o - 9 years ago

        Haha Gazoo knows what Steve Jobs would have done. I’ve never heard that before!!! Jony Ive’s brilliant team of the best designers in the world are the ones that made them have those colors, and they all look amazing. ‘Gold plated’ seems you don’t know what gold plating is… It’s a gold color… They literally have nothing to do with each other, besides color.

        It’s easy to see that you would be a horrible designer.

      • o0smoothies0o - 9 years ago

        ‘Fake gold painted’ rather.

      • Dan (@danmdan) - 9 years ago

        It’s only a little symbol – one should not get one’s knickers in a twist over something that 50% will love and t’other 50% will hate – about normal for the Apple Watch itself I should think !

    • Timothy Williamson - 9 years ago

      I agree, they honestly look like those lame smilies that people would add into their emails. Like these: http://jeanmariotte.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/smiley.JPG

    • Dirk Lenz - 9 years ago

      Holy crap – your avatar icon just nixed 83 words ;-)

  2. Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

    The ephemeral fingerpainting messages may be the best thing about Apple Watch, but those animated emoji are BY FAR the worst. They remind me of the malware toolbar crap which plagued teenage girls’ desktops in the early 2000s.

    They’re just plain horrible, and don’t match the mature aesthetic of Apple Watch at all.

    • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

      I like them. They remind me of Little Big Planet’s sack boy and how you could toggle up and down through his emotions in game to communicate with other online players. It’s Fun.

      “They’re just plain horrible, and don’t match the mature aesthetic of Apple Watch at all.”

      Apple wants kids to want this. Traditional watches only appeals to old fogies who are collecting it for it’s “sophistication.” If Apple can’t get the watch on the top of every teen’s christmas list than the watch will fail. That you think it looks like a teen girls desktop is probably a good sign.

      Apple still talks about timekeeping and complications, but that’s to get a small market compared to the teens who will want to like Instagram photos or draw neon peens on their friend’s wrist.

      Every important technology in the world has been based in communication and the young jump on it first. I think it’s a smart move and it’s something Apple has over any other smart watch.

      • Milorad Ivović - 9 years ago

        If they were aiming them at kids, they’d probably show a few more kids in their marketing. Android is aiming theirs at kids. That’s a big difference.

        None of Apple’s sophisticated materials marketing of Watch, indicates that they’re targeting anyone under 25 — yet. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but it’s definitely not happening now.

        Also, even kids deserve better than this shit.

    • Timothy Williamson - 9 years ago

      This. I 100% agree. They remind me of malware.

  3. Don Seidel - 9 years ago

    And THIS is the great march of technology? Everyone needs a second screen for their iPhone, to be sure :-)

    • jrox16 - 9 years ago

      Its a watch and fitness band that also provides an easily and quickly accessible second screen to your iphone. You do it injustice when you describe it as only a “second screen”. Most people already wear watches which do so little (time and date, maybe alarm and stopwatch), so why not keep doing that but provide so much more convenience??

  4. irelandjnr - 9 years ago

    To comment on these animated Emoji’s you need to see them on the watch itself. They’re too large and ill-proportioned on your monitor. Let’s see them on the watch first.

    P.S. This WordPress comments system is UTTER JUNK!!
    Please switch to discuss, it’s so much nicer. It 500 times less buggy.

    • irelandjnr - 9 years ago

      Excuse my typos above. Another issue with WordPress comments, you can’t edit your comments. What year is this? Seriously. Switch to Disqus!

      • Gazoo Bee - 9 years ago

        They don’t want people to edit their comments on this site. The also randomly ban people from commenting on some articles if they don’t like them. If they used a proper commenting service, they wouldn’t be allowed to arbitrarily ban people.

        They also like to have *individual* control over user comments. There are two writers on this site for instance that don’t allow me to comment on any of their stories. If I try commenting on any stories written by these two people (who have decided they don’t like me I suppose), my comments just go to oblivion. Every time.

      • Funny enough Gazoo Bee I had a comment deleted yesterday which was non-inflammatory but took umbrage with the fact that the author of the article who shall remain nameless claimed that an iPhone camera replaced a DSLR.

      • friedmud1 - 9 years ago

        Gasto: my only problem with the commenting system is not being able to block YOU! ;-)

      • friedmud1 - 9 years ago

        Lol – and of course my iPhone corrected to “Gasto” for some reason but I can’t edit it…

        So now I have two problems:

        1. Inability to block
        2. Inability to edit

    • Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

      God this commenting system is horrendous!

      I can’t get my name in wordpress because someone used it but not actively and wordpress won’t allow me to contact them to get it.

      Twitter login sucks because I have to “allow access” each session and I can’t get reply notifications.

      Like I really want to feel like it’s worth commenting on this site, but it’s so hard to when I can’t tell if someone replies to me and the comments get lost as soon as the article is off the first page.

      The Verge has a great edit feature that allows you to edit within 90s or something. That way you can go back and fix those last minute mistakes and not worry that people are able to just rewrite their comments.

      Please switch to something else. It looks like 9to5 has a strong readership and It deserves a better commenting system.

    • Laughing_Boy48 - 9 years ago

      WordPress is horrible. It seems as though most of the sites I use have Disqus as the comment engine and it so much nicer to use.

  5. drgeert - 9 years ago

    I think those emoji look so ugly because they are very big on this website. They could be nice when on a watch screen.

    • irelandjnr - 9 years ago

      I’m thinking the same thing. They may not translate well to the large screen. These watches are tiny.

  6. Greg Kaplan (@kaplag) - 9 years ago

    I think the one thing I don’t like is how the smiling one has stylized white spots in the eye in addition to the more natural light reflections. They conflict with each other. If they stuck with the environment lighting that the heart one has I think it would have looked better.

    I love the way they handled the mouth and tongue shading. They did a good job translating that to 3d. The eye just stands out as not following the same rules.

  7. collectantic - 9 years ago

    Why people who appreciate or had appreciated Apple and writew on Apple dedicated websites still don’t want to stop saying bullshit and understand what are Apple’s strategy?

    Yes these emojy are possibly ugly. And what? It is NOT designed to be wonderful, it is designes as a demo to show in a very simple and neutral way what could make developpers. On your iphone the yellow big emojy are ugly too but you can download dozen of differents.

    Same with the watch faces. Some are wonderful, some are ugly, it is a question of taste, but the one presented are only intended to give ideas of the possibilities. Then developpers will spend hours to make beautiful faces.

    It is the same for years and years, why don’t you try to understand? Apple present a product in order to give third party developpers ideas on what they could do, and then they let them work for them. Faces, emoji… but the same with BANDS and CASES and so over internet it is possible to see some bands and cases which will totally transform the aspect of the watch.

    The remark on the “fake gold plated” color is totally stupid, first because Apple’s strategy is to orient the brend to luxury marketing strategies, and mainly because most of iphone owners ad a case to their phone.

Author

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.