From the painfully passive-aggressive thumbs up to millennials’ beloved laugh-cry, you can say a lot with a single emoji.
But would you be so keen to fire off the little yellow images if you knew each one would cost you 50 cents?
Some mobile users have been unwittingly paying that price, racking up as much as $25 a month in extra charges for messages containing emojis.
But telcos say it’s not the emojis that incur a cost, it’s the way they’re being sent.
A 2degrees spokesperson said if emojis were sent as a picture message, otherwise known as an MMS, customers would be charged.
“This is a good thing to watch out for. Some handsets will send emojis as MMS, but you can change the settings to make sure [your phone] doesn’t.
“Some older handsets will automatically send them as MMS, and sometimes messages longer than 160 characters are sent as MMS.”
2degrees, Spark, One NZ and Skinny all charge about 50 cents per picture message sent over their networks.
However, it was possible to avoid getting lumped with a big bill for heavy emoji use.
“Firstly, have a play with the settings on your handset and make sure you aren’t sending an MMS when you don’t want to,” the spokesperson said.
“Or, to be really safe, only send text messages using text and keep it under 160 characters, and use a messaging app if you want to send emojis, gifs, stickers and more.”
Apple devices connecting with other Apple devices could also use the free iMessage service to send picture messages.
A One NZ spokesperson said each emoji counted as two standard characters, meaning a single emoji sent as text or as part of text that was less than 160 characters would not incur additional charges.
“If you send a message of 150 standard characters with an emoji on the end, this will be sent as an SMS and your normal SMS rate will apply,” she said.
“If you send a message of 150 standard characters with 10 emojis on the end, because each emoji is worth two standard characters, this will be 170 characters in total and will be sent as MMS.”
Picture messaging required specialised technology which made it more expensive to provide, she said. ​​
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