I know many of you are probably familiar with the app MakeItMine which allows you to easily customize your Carrier Logo and Banner (that is the area where the time is located on the Status Bar). One cool thing that I just found is that you can add emoticons to your Status Bar using MIM (MakeItMine).

When you open the app, just enter the emoticons like you would your custom text (see note below). Simple and easy.

I did find a few issues, the Carrier Logo area will cut the top of some of the taller emoticons (the Banner area does not). Also, you cannot use MIM to change the Banner if you have the Status Bar Date mod turned on in SBSettings. Other than that, kind of a fun little mod with the opportunity for some crazy Status Bars! You can get MakeItMine via the modmyi source.

Note: In order to have emoticons on your Status Bar, you will need to enable them on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can do so using Spell Number….see the review of Spell Number HERE. Or, if you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch, you can use an app called Emoji in Cydia…see review of Emoji HERE>.

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For those of you who do not know what Emoji is, according to Wiki, it is “the Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons.” It basically enables those cute little emoticons on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Just to make one thing clear, Emoji are already technically on your iPhone and iPod Touch, Emoji applications just enable them.

The reason I am confused is because one of the Top Paid apps in an application that enables emoticons when you can do it for free with an application called Spell Number. The paid app does give you a list of the code for each emoticon (though, I’m not sure how useful that is and probably not worth $1.99).

Spell Number can be used on an iPhone or iPod Touch (including the iPhone 3GS) that is on 2.2, 2.2.1 and 3.0. It is extremely easy to enable the emoticons, just follow the steps below.

1. Download Spell Number from the App Store.
2. Open the app and enter the number 91929394.59
3. Close the application using the Home Button (you do not push any buttons, just enter the number and close the app).
4. Open your stock Settings app and go into General > Keyboard > International Keyboard > Japanese and turn of Emji.
5. Close Settings application using the Home Button

To use the emoticons, just go into any application in which you use the keyboard and you will notice a new globe icon next to the number icon. When you select it, it will bring up all the available emoticons. There are 6 categories to choose from (on the lower menu bar) and multiple pages in each category (just scroll from right to left to see more). To get back to your keyboard, just tap the globe icon all the way to the left on the lower menu bar of the emoticons keyboard. You can delete an emoticons from where you are typing by using the arrow all the way to the right on the lower menu bar of the emoticons keyboard.

There are a few things to note. On an iPhone 3G on firmware 3.0, the globe and delete arrow icons do not show up on the emoticon keyboard but, they still work when you tap on them. I’m not sure what the deal is with that…a glitch I guess because it works fine on other devices on the 3.0 firmware (including the iPhone 3GS). Also, only other iPhone and iPod Touch users can view the emoticons.

Definitely a “must have” application! I love my emoticons! 

Note: Once you enable the Emoji keyboard in your settings, you can delete the Spell Number app if you would like…you are still able to enable/disable the keyboard in the Setting without Spell number installed. However, if you would like to keep the applicaiton so that you know how to spell large numbers, that is cool too! :)

For those of you in the jailbreak community…there are apps in Cydia that enable Emoji that are also free.

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Available In: App Store

Price: Free

iMood is a simple application that allows you to create scrolling banners or just display an emoticon message on your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen. iMood opens to the main page in which you have two options; Moods or Chat. The Moods option allows you to select a mood from a list of options (Happy, Sad, Love, Awake, Laughing…etc). Once you have selected a mood, you can then type in a message. When you select Show, it will display the emoticon for the mood you chose and your message on your device’s screen. To get back to the edit page, just tap Back.

The Chat option allows is where you create a scrolling banner. Here you can choose how fast you would like the message to scroll using the Duration bar (left is slower, right is faster). You can also choose whether you would like a white or black background…this will automatically change the font to the contrasting color. You can then type in the message that you would like to scroll. Once your message has been typed, select Done. This will scroll the message across your device’s screen. To get back to the edit screen…just tap Change.

This is a very simple application that doesn’t have a ton of features but, does what it says it is going to do (sometimes simple is nice!). The only thing that I have noticed is that when you create a scrolling banner, and the message is scrolling, your status bar still remains at the top…it would be nice if the status bar disappeared (which is does in the Moods option).

If you’re looking to add emoticons to your iPhone or iPod Touch, you might be surprised it’s already built in. The catch is that it’s only available when your iPhone is set to Japanese language. That might make running the rest of your iPhone a little difficult. Fortunately there is a fix in Cydia. It’s just titled Emoji and it’s through iSpazio. Emoji is very poplular in Japan and was added in firmware 2.2.

Once installed you just go to your Settings App > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > Japanese > turn on Emoji. Now you can go to your Keyboard and you will see a little globe in the bottom left corner. Just tap it to see all the different emoticons. The tabs across the bottom show all the different categories and once in a category you can swipe left or right to see more. The first tab is the most recently used emoticons. This will fill up as you use them.

If you send a text or email with one of these icons only iPhone users with 2.2 or above firmware will see it. They do not have to be jailbroke to receive them. The icons show up anywhere you can type.

Recent Twitter for emoji iPhone:

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