Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus getting new wave of AR Emojis

Remember that time that Samsung launched that Galaxy S9 phone and had those weird AR Emojis on it? The ones that we thought were kind of cool to start with but then quickly got tired of? Well... they're back.

Technically, they never really went anywhere, but Samsung has brought out a new wave of choices for your phone, taking the number from 18 to 36.

For those that don't remember, AR Emojis are cartoon-like representations of the user - created through a picture from the front-facing camera - which are coded into little GIFs to express emotions that you can send through social media or messaging apps.

The first 18 were fine, but we found that our pals quickly tired of receiving weird little images of us - especially as we were forced to use the same ones again and again.

So with that in mind the new options (shown above from Samsung) will add a little bit interest to things, although these seem a bit more 'snazzy' than before. More of the glamorous about them, if you will.

It's not going to stop there either - Samsung has pledged to bring more AR Emoji to the range, bringing the total up to 54 soon.

Whether it'll launch on other older phones too - it's been claimed by the technology creator's CEO that this is possible - remains to be seen, but for now it might be time to dust off this feature if you've forgotten about it on your Galaxy S9.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief


Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.