With emoji encroaching on the use of actual written words for text messages, it's about time that smartphone operating systems made them look better. While iOS and Android cannot claim to have a foot up on the competition in this area, it is the latter which is trying to make its emoji look far more palatable.

In the latest blog for Google's Android N developer preview, the company detailed a series of updates that developers could get stuck into. On the non-developer side of things, it was a new range of emoji that caught our attention. According to Google, they are " introducing a new emoji design for people emoji that moves away from our generic look in favor of a more human-looking design."

The result can be seen below, and while some of the emoji faces still have pretty dead-looking eyes, there are some that have good expressions, like the facepalm emoji. Along with going for a more "human-looking design," the emoji will also feature support for skin tone variations, which has long been one of the more contentious issues surrounding the use of people emoji.