Emojis have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. New emojis are added yearly by the Unicode consortium and usually, newer software is updated first with these emojis.
You might have also noticed that companies usually have their own interpretations of the same emoji. The same emoji might look different on Apple devices, Microsoft devices, Samsung devices and also different on apps like WhatsApp.
Most people out there do not care whether an emoji is an accurate representation of what it symbolizes in real life. However, there are few of us who care about such nitty-gritty details and this planetary scientist is one of them.
Dr James O’Donoghue decided to do a fun experiment. He singled out “Ringed Planet” emojis which depicted the planet Saturn and verified whether Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and WhatsApp.
I'm a planetary scientist with published papers specifically on Saturn's atmosphere/rings, so thought it'd be fun to rank the "Ringed Planet" emojis🪐
First I'm gonna assume they're trying to be SATURN ok, so I'll be ranking their accuracy based on that. Results end of thread!👇 pic.twitter.com/BVcI9EHNxf
— Dr James O'Donoghue (@physicsJ) February 26, 2020
Since he is a scientist, he was checking out how accurate the Saturn emoji was to the real thing. He checked the shade of clouds, the famous rings and interesting enough the exact tilt of the planet which is known to be 26.7 degrees.
From his assessment, he found that WhatsApp’s interpretation of Saturn is the most accurate. He liked the banded structure of the atmosphere although he forgave the colours being off. WhatsApp also nailed the planet’s tilt and the rings. Apple’s interpretation was second from his assessment where he liked how they captured the golden yellow shades of Saturn’s cloud tops and the famous polar hexagon but it failed massively on the tilt. The worst offender was Twitter in his assessment.
Number 1 is Whatsapp! Apple was a close second, but I was so impressed by Whatsapp-Saturn's tilt & rings being so accurate that it was an easy choice: the rings are Saturn's crown jewels!
As I said this assumes they're trying to match Saturn, may not be true. Thx for reading!🪐 pic.twitter.com/g0FOtID7Em
— Dr James O'Donoghue (@physicsJ) February 26, 2020
It is rare to see people take emojis seriously like this and better still, critique them for their authenticity. WhatsApp takes a win here and in my opinion, I thought Apple would win this
