Every major vendor has now committed to redesigning the gun emoji and replace it with a water pistol/squirt gun design, reports Emojipedia. Though it took a while for it to happen, it is now happening at all once.
Google started rolling out the new pistol emoji to Android users from last week, now Facebook and Microsoft are also joining the list of others platforms who have already made the switch including iOS, Twitter, Samsung, and WhatsApp. The major change which once showed pistol weapon on all major platforms is now a water pistol.
The report also says that these changes are common and aren’t limited to one emoji as all the emoji sets have been moving closer to one another and this new water pistol/squirt gun design is one among them. Consistent emoji display across platforms is a must rather than having one platform showing it as a weapon, and others show it as a toy. However, until the roll outs complete, the confusion persists for a small period of time.
Apple was the first to adopt the water pistol/squirt gun design back in 2016 with iOS 10 beta and remained until the final release of iOS 10. With compatibility as the major concern, Google has also finally made the change recently. Facebook, however, confirmed that the reason for their change was to keep in line with other vendors. As mentioned, vendors are rolling out the change, while some already made it available others planning to make the change available soon.