Apple's upcoming iOS 9.1 is set to be a huge update for the iDevices, and is already said to be a considerable upgrade over the previous iOS versions. But already the new update is carrying a sort of controversial tag to it, courtesy of a certain 'eye in speech bubble' emoji that users are trying to decipher.
The unexplained eye icon will arrive with iOS 9.1. The update, as of now, is also expected to allow fans to use the highly-anticipated middle finger emoji.
However, according to Jeremy Burge, founder of an online dictionary called Emojipedia, the emoji had not been added to the official emotional icon database that's operated by an organisation called Unicode. Burge also admitted that he was baffled about the mystery emoji, glimpsed in a preview version of the upcoming OS.
"A mysterious new emoji has shown up and nobody knows what it is, or why it exists," he wrote in a blog post. "To a casual observer, this appears to be just another emoji - one of many planned for the iOS 9.1 emoji update."
"But the strange thing about this character (which Apple calls 'eye in speech bubble') is that it's not a standard Unicode addition. It can't be found in Unicode 1.1, or any other version right through to the Unicode 9.0 candidates," it adds.
At the moment, the strange icon is only featured as an ellipsis in the symbols section of the emoji keyboard. Once clicked, it pops up to reveal an eye with a quotation mark, which are then combined using a technique called a "zero width joiner".
And if you think that's baffling, you won't guess the kind of comments people have placed, as far as their theories of the bizarre emoji is concerned.
"My bet is that it's an Orwellian shorthand to say 'This conversation is unsecure, watch what you say'," one suggested, while some Reddit users suggested the emoji was designed for use by the Illuminati. There were even others who joked that the NSA could use it when admitting it had read people's messages.
What do you think the new, strange emoji stands for? Let us know in the comments section below.
Stay tuned for more updates!
[Source: Mirror]
