JapaneseEmoticons.me

Express Yourself with Japanese Emoticons, Kaomoji, Emoji, Text Faces and Dongers!

The Japanese Emoticons Android App is Finally Here!

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Well it took way longer than I originally planned and a ton of stuff went wrong during the process but the Japanese Emoticons Android app is finally finished and available for download on Google Play! I ended up having to hire a second developer to help me finish and submit everything but everything is good now and I’m quite excited that this app is finally available. Making an Android app I’ve now learned is pretty different from making an iOS app so the Android app doesn’t match the iOS one 100% but it’s really close. So click the link below to download the app and enjoy and a final note please leave a 5-star review.  That is the absolute best way to show your support.  The more good reviews the app gets the better chance it has of people finding it.

Click Here to Download the App

Where is the Japanese Emoticons Android App?

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So I’ve been getting a lot of emails, comments and messages about the Android app so I thought I’d make a post explaining what’s going on because it’s a little bit messed up. I got the first build of the app probably over a month ago now.  Everything was working great, there was just a few minor issues I found when my friends and tested the app on their Android phones. I sent them the list of fixes and they said I’d get the next build soon, which I hoped would be the final build and everything would be good to launch. At this point communication started breaking down and they stopped returning most of my messages and emails but I did get a message a couple of weeks ago saying I should get the second build of the app the next day.  I haven’t been able to get a response out of them since. The people working on my app are great.  They built the most recent version of the iOS app and did a fantastic job and up until the first build of the Android version everything was fantastic as well. The problem is that I hired a group of people from an app development company that’s based in the Ukraine and due to everything that’s going on over there right now politically I don’t think they’re at work… So the whole situation kind of sucks for everyone right now and I feel for them.  I’m sure they’d like to be at work getting paid to make apps and life in general probably really sucks for them right now especially since their country was just invaded by Russia… On my side however it also sucks.  The app is almost done and I’ve already sunk a significant amount of money into this project. I can probably make a case to get my money back through the site I hired them through since I never got the final product but that’s not entirely fair to them either since they’ve almost finished doing all the work.  Plus then I have to go through all the trouble of finding a new contractor, interviewing people and start development from scratch again. So my plan at this point is to wait another little bit for things in the Ukraine to hopefully calm done.  I’m hoping everything will settle down, these guys will go back to work and then it should just be a couple of days at the most to test out that last build and maybe fix one or two more tiny things.  The app is really close to being done. If that doesn’t happen then at some point I’ll have to assume the worst happened to them and fight to get my money back and start development over again which is too bad because I really liked working with these guys. So for everyone wondering, that’s where we’re at right now with the Android app.

Question for Android experts!

I know very little about developing apps and even less about Android since I’ve never really used it.  I have an APK file of the first build of the app.  Is this useful at all for development?  Would I be able to hand this file off to another developer and would they be able to access the code and finish developing the app? I don’t have any of the source code or working files and I know now for an iOS app at least there’s a whole folder of various resources and things you need.  Is everything somehow contained in the APK file or is that pretty much useless? Thanks in advance if anyone is able to help answer this question.

Japanese Emoticons version 2.0 for iOS is now available!

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The latest version of our iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app was approved late last night and is now available for download in the iTunes app store! This new version features a brand new design for iOS7 plus all the emoticons currently on this site are now in the app.  In total we added about 1,500 new emoticons and 23 new categories to the app. We also fixed a few bugs so the app should run a lot smoother now. So if you haven’t downloaded the app yet head on over to the iTunes store and download it now! One word of warning to the people who are updating though, we had to completely redo the database of emoticons so when you update you will lose everything that’s currently saved in your favourites menu.  Because of the fixes we made to the app though, this won’t happen again in future updates and we’re sorry for any inconvenience this might cause.

What about Android?

I’m pleased to announce that work has started on the Android version of the app.  Not a lot is happening right now because of the holidays but stay tuned because an Android version of the new updated version of the app is in progress and should be out in a few weeks!

Other app news

We’re also in the progress of releasing a free ad-supported sort of demo version of both the iOS and Android versions of the app.  This won’t have the full emoticon collection but it will give you the opportunity to test it out the app before buying it. The free iOS version will most likely be out before the Android version as it’s not going to require nearly as much work. And that’s it for news. Look forward to the Android version soon and have a safe and happy holidays everyone!

Android App, App Reviews and a Few Other Things

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An Android version of the iOS app

So a lot of people have been asking for an Android version of the app so here’s the official deal with what’s happening with that. I had originally planned to make both an iOS and an Android version at the same time however I quickly found out that I could not afford to do this.  So I decided based on the mobile traffic to this site being mostly from iOS devices to do the iOS version first. Then I could hopefully make back the money it cost to make this app and then follow up with an Android version and this is still the plan. The reports are in for sales of the app for August and so far I’ve made back about 20% of what it cost to have this app made so it looks like it might be another couple of months until I can get the Android version happening. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to use the database of emoticons that was created for the iOS app again as well as most if not all of the graphics that were used in the app and that this will make the Android version cheaper and faster to make.  I don’t know a thing about app coding though so I could be completely wrong.

So how can you help?

If you’ve downloaded the iOS app please leave a 5-star review.  I didn’t want to program any of those annoying “please review this app” pop-ups into the app but we do need reviews so I’m asking here.  It only takes a couple of seconds and is important for a number of reasons.

1) I need at least 5 reviews to show an average star rating on my app.

This is the first time I’ve ever made an app and I’m still learning things like reviews only show up in the country that they were made.  So far only Canada and the United States have 5 or more reviews and are the only countries currently showing an average rating.

2) Reviews help the app get found in search results in the iTunes app store.

This is especially important since some guy has literally stolen all the content off this site as well as graphics that I created for this site and released his own iPhone app. His app currently ranks before mine in the search results because it gets a boost since it’s “free”.  It’s not free though, he offers a few of the emoticons free and then you have to pay inside the app to unlock all the content that’s literally copied and pasted from this website.

A side note:

I’ve been pretty cool about people taking the emoticons from this site and putting them on their own sites since I don’t own them, no one does so whatever.  Even if you’ve copied and pasted everything straight off this site I haven’t really cared that much. I have however put a lot of work into this site and assembling the collection of emoticons here and if you’re going to steal all the content from this site with the exact same categories and lists, steal my graphics, steal my app description and then intentionally try to mislead people who are looking for my app into downloading yours then you’re officially a dick so don’t do that. But by all means feel free to use these emoticons where ever you want and do whatever you want with them.  A link back to this site is always appreciated but it’s ok if you don’t do that.  Just don’t be a dick.

Some other site news

I’ve got some other plans for this site over the next little while when I can get the time to work on it. An awesome guy created this random emoticon generator: http://dominick.p.elu.so/fun/kaomoji/index.php and we’re going to hopefully get it added to this site. I also plan to do a complete re-organization of all the emoticons and probably create a bunch of new categories to hopefully make that a bit better and easier to use.  The categories are a bit out-dated, especially with all the suggestions you guys have been making. Also with that will quite possibly be a site redesign since this site is starting to get a bit too complicated for this design. And for all of you that have suggested emoticons I haven’t forgotten.  Once I re-organize everything and also hopefully create a new system that will make entering the emoticons to the site easier I’ll be uploading everything in my backlog of suggested emoticons. So that’s it for news for a while.  Thanks again for all the support and a huge thank you to everyone who’s downloaded the app!