I have no idea what the creative process at Samsung was like while they were designing emojis. Did the children of employees draw them? Had the designers never seen or used emojis on other platforms? Were they simply running low on time?We may never know the answer to these questions. However, we can delve into some of the most bizarre of Samsung’s emoji library.
Case 1: 😬, the grimace emoji.
In every sane emoji library, the emotion portrayed by the grimace emoji is easily recognizable.
The interpretation of the grimace is relatively consistent across all platforms. It’s a face of discomfort, showing gritted teeth with emotionless eyes. It gets the point across. However, Samsung decided to buck the trend with their grimace emoji…
I have absolutely no clue what emotion is being portrayed by this emoji. Not only is it creepy, but this emoji doesn’t convey the emotion of discomfort expressed by all the other renditions. Samsung’s grimace emoji almost looks satisfied in a weird way.
Case 2: The blood type emojis.
The emoji library contains 3 icons — 🅰️, 🅱️, 🆎, and 🅾️ — that are designed to represent the four human blood types. On literally every platform but Samsung these emojis are red. All are nearly identical to the original Apple rendition:
This makes sense, because blood is red. However, for some reason unknown to mankind, all of Samsung’s blood type emojis are blue:
Why?
Case 3: The Heart Eyes Emoji
The heart-eyes emoji has many uses and it’s completely work-appropriate in most instances. For example, using this emoji to express your satisfaction with a coworker’s accomplishment would be completely appropriate. Of course, Samsung has to ruin this.
Samsung’s rendition of this emoji is completely different from everyone else’s. Featuring a tilted-back head, red cheeks, and a triangular mouth, Samsung’s heart-eyes emoji seems overtly sexual.
Case 4: The eye-roll emoji.
This one is absolutely baffling. Here is how the rolling eyes emoji looks normally:
And here’s what someone at Samsung (likely while intoxicated) thought an eye-roll looked like:
What? I think Emojipedia puts this best, simply stating that “confusingly, this is shown as a happy side-glance on Samsung devices.”
Case 5: The “imp” emoji.
Often referred to as “Angry Face With Horns”, this emoji is primarily used for expressing frustration in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Its design is relatively consistent across all platforms, usually appearing in purple but sometimes red or orange.
However, Samsung seemed to think this emoji would be best as a strange smiling demon child.
Not only is this conveying the opposite emotion, it’s just plain weird.
And many more…
This article only included my favorite weird-ass Samsung emojis. However, there are many more strange examples such as Tired Face, Flushed Face, Cold Sweat, and Clown Face.
Overall, the whole Samsung emoji library is unusual. However, I must give credit where it is due and recognize that Samsung has more detailed food emojis than anyone else.