Emoticons on KIT KAT

[Ozman44]

For whatever reason I cannot get emoticons to work with my Nexus 4 running 4.4.1 Kit Kat. I'm wondering if it's my service provider "straight talk" or is it 4.4? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[kmcochran]

Are you using the emojis? I had to enable it in my keyboard settings and then it worked. I'm on ST-AT&T, but have not upgraded to KitKat yet. Oh, are you on AT&T or T-Mobile? If you are on AT&T, can you verify if your tethering works? That's the main reason I haven't upgraded. I need tethering to continue to work.

 

[gwpinetree]

Related: People are sending me messages with symbols that I don't know how to reproduce on my Moto-X. Here's an example:

 

[gwpinetree]

Hah! Found it!

In the Google Keyboard there's an emoticon icon in the lower left. When you tap that, you get seven tabs to choose from. Within each of those you can swipe right or left to see sub-tabs with what seems like hundreds. See below:

 

[peto]

I couldn't see any emojis / emoticons on my moto e, nor could I send them . I went into into the options of the messaging app and changed the character encoding. I changed from "gsm, 7 bits" to "auto" .