Emojis might be incredibly popular at the moment, but people still love emoticons – you really couldn’t get more old-school than this.
When you’re sick of all those GIFs, and flashy emojis, take 5 minutes of your time to enable the two built-in emoticon keyboards that have been hiding in your iPhone.
The first one, we talked about a short while ago – you can go through all the steps needed to unlock it by following this guide. However, it appears there is yet another emoticon keyboard available in the iOS stock keyboard and you can enable it just as easily. Simply follow the instructions below:
Open the Settings app and select General > Keyboard.
Then, tap on ‘Keyboards‘ and select the ‘Add New Keyboard‘ option. Here, tap on the ‘Japanese‘ keyboard option and on the following screen select ‘Kana‘. Tap on ‘Done‘ to save the changes.
From now on, the Japanese Kana keyboard can be accessed via the stock keyboard in any app. In the keyboard, select the globe icon which will allow you to switch to a different keyboard. Simply tap it a few times to get to your newly unlocked Japanese keyboard ( a bunch of Japanese characters will appear when you get to it). Then, tap on the smiley emoticon (as highlighted in the image above).
The emoticon bar will be displayed below your keyboard’s input field. Tap on the up arrow button (ˆ) to view the complete list of emoticons available in Kana.
That’s it! Now you can enjoy your new Unicode emoticons and spice up any conversation or piece of text you write on your iPhone or iPad.
Let us know how you like these hidden emoticons in the comments section below and don’t forget to follow us on  Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to stay up to date with the latest apps, games, guides, and everything Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
