iOS tapbacks have infiltrated the Android army.
I had a friend who had an Android phone - top-of-the-line Samsung… something. He got a message from a friend of ours with an iPhone, showed it to me and said, “What the expletive is this expletive?!?” He was referring to the iOS reactions that have amused iPhone users (Allison Sheridan not included) and annoyed Android users for years.
Now Android users can join in the fun. A piece from Engadget has Google saying in a blog post that it’s “rolling out a feature for [Google] Messages that translates iMessaging ‘Tapbacks’ as emojis.” That’ll hit Android devices set to English first, followed by additional languages at a later time.
If you’ve not seen the expletive to which my friend referred, Engadget says:
Until now, a “thumbs up” to a text that says “see you in ten?” sent from an iPhone would be translated to “liked ‘see you in ten?’”, for example. With the new feature, Android users receive emojis instead, though they may not match exactly what was sent — a “heart” reaction yields the “face with the heart eyes,” for instance. To make that clear to the user, they'll also see “translated from iOS.”
